How provider enablement and pay-for-reporting can move dentistry forward with Rebekah Mathews

This episode explores how the dental payer world can innovate without losing sight of the human side of care. Matt Allen is joined by Rebecca Mathews, who brings about 20 years of experience at the intersection of oral health policy and system improvement, to discuss provider enablement, alternative payment models, and what it will take to make dental care more human. We discuss why the biggest barrier to progress is often not the technology itself, but the human work required to use it well, and why pay-for-reporting may be a practical first step toward better data sharing and more advanced value-based care. Key topics Rebecca Mathews shares her background in oral health policy, state government relations, Medicaid funding, and work with DentaQuest and CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. The conversation centers on the “human side” of digital transformation and why dentistry needs more support for change management. Rebecca explains provider enablement as equipping clinical teams with tools, resources, and strategies to adopt new workflows successfully. Matt and Rebecca discuss how dentistry has lagged medicine in operational support for change, including infrastructure and human adaptation during EHR and value-based care rollouts. Technology is framed as a partner, not the center, with its role being to unlock data, improve workflows, support quality, and strengthen financial performance. They dig into alternative payment models and how more dental plans are using them to tie reimbursement more closely to quality. Rebecca explains pay-for-reporting as a simpler alternative payment arrangement where reimbursement is earned by submitting structured data. Examples include reporting caries risk status and supporting closed-loop referrals in medical-dental integration work. Matt emphasizes that shared data can create a more balanced payer-provider relationship and help practices shape the future of value-based care instead of reacting to it later. The discussion closes on patient experience, with Rebecca noting that the industry still tends to measure it episodically rather than longitudinally across the care journey. Timestamps (00:00) Setting up the conversation after NADP Converge and the payer innovation theme (01:25) Rebecca Mathews introduces her background in oral health policy and system improvement (04:10) Why the human side of digital transformation matters most right now (08:07) Provider enablement and why dentistry has lacked this kind of support (10:50) New DSO roles and tools that reflect a more medical-style approach to support (12:21) Technology as a partner for workflow, quality, and financial improvement (13:35) How provider-payer partnerships can build enablement at scale (14:05) Alternative payment models and the push to connect reimbursement with quality (15:09) What pay-for-reporting is and why it matters for structured data exchange (16:40) Using pay-for-reporting to track caries risk status over time (18:19) Closed-loop referrals and medical-dental integration examples (19:01) Why shared data creates trust and opens the door to more advanced payment models (22:59) A lighter turn: music, podcasts, and a few personal preferences (27:27) Why patient experience is still measured too episodically (28:40) What really gets a patient through the door versus what keeps them loyal (31:37) How to reach Rebecca for APM and oral health policy conversations