If you have a Sleep Related Breathing Disorder and you're interested in Oral Appliance Therapy, the answers FAQs below are meant to help you prepare to talk to your sleep specialist or our sleep dentist. If you have a question that isn’t answered here, please give us a call at 312-676-9893 or send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Most medical insurance companies provide coverage for Oral Appliance Therapy. Major insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, Aetna, Humana, Cigna and Medicare have policies that outline the criteria they require for coverage. Once you provide your medical insurance information to our team, we'll check with your insurance company regarding your specific coverage. Each insurance plan is different, and your total out-of-pocket costs will be determined by your co-pay, co-insurance and/or deductible. You may also be able to take advantage of PPO discounts, if your insurance allows them. Once we know you have coverage, we start a pre-approval process known as pre-certification or pre-determination. This gives the insurance the opportunity to review your case for approval. Learn more.
We are network providers with most major medical insurance companies. Please call our office to verify if we are in-network with your specific insurance company.
We are network providers with most major medical insurance companies. Please call our office to verify if we are in-network with your specific insurance company. Learn more.
We understand that there are some medical insurances that are still developing their criteria for coverage of Oral Appliance Therapy. Our expert team in the Insurance Department is devoted to the education and collaboration needed to build strong cases for coverage of your treatment. Even if your insurance doesn't normally cover Oral Appliance Therapy, we may be able to get your treatment considered. Learn more.
As a general rule, we will have your oral appliance ready for delivery within 30 days from when your insurance company provides us with an approval.
The oral appliances we use have a hard outer shell and a soft inside that provides for maximum comfort. Usually after the oral appliance has been worn for a short period of time the patient reports they feel strange if they are not wearing their oral appliance at night. Unofficially, the adherence rate for patients wearing the oral appliance seven nights a week for seven hours or more is in the 90th percentile.
We adhere to the practice parameters established by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for the treatment of snoring and obstructive sleep apnea with oral appliances. We evaluate our patients on a regular basis for the first few months they are treating their sleep related breathing disorder per our oral appliance therapy program. We use their subjective symptoms such as a decrease in snoring and/or feeling more rested during the day. Once the patient has adapted to their oral appliance and is feeling better, we refer the patient for a follow up sleep test in order to determine the efficacy of their treatment with the oral appliance. The patient's physician(s) will review the results of the sleep test with the patient and determine if the oral appliance is treating the patient's sleep related breathing disorder. If for some reason, the oral appliance is not successfully treating the patient's sleep related breathing disorder, we have alternative treatment options (see tap-pap) that we may present to the patient. As with any medical procedure, there are no guarantees, however; we are fully committed to doing everything within our power to make oral appliance therapy a successful treatment option for our patients.
The oral appliance may possibly change your bite or minamally shift teath with time. To minimize this movement, we teach our patients morning exercises and the use of a custom made AM aligner. The AM aligner is basically a thin piece of plastic that is softened and is inserted in the patient's mouth 30 minutes after the appliance is removed in the morning. The patient gently bites into the AM aligner for five minutes each morning and this helps to reposition the bite and minimizes shifting of the teeth. We monitor patients at their follow up appointments and many times these bite changes are so mild, the patient does not realize there has been any movement. Learn more.