Have you ever wondered how Epic - the dominant health IT platform for the acute care medical market and many ambulatory practices affiliated with hospitals - will enter the dental market? Well we were curious, and it turns out that Epic has already made its move. Read our feature story this month to see how Epic has quietly expanded into dentistry with one of the largest Dental Service Organizations.
Last issue we covered our inaugural Healthcare Fintech Forum, taking place this year in Nashville from November 9-11. We have launched the event website and opened registration: click here to learn more!
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FEATURE ARTICLE
Epic establishes dental beachhead with PDS Health
Epic Systems, the EMR, practice management, and revenue cycle platform dominating mid-size and large healthcare organizations in the U.S., now has a growing dental footprint. Its largest single deployment came through one partner, PDS Health. The Henderson, NV-based DSO – formerly known as Pacific Dental Services, has deployed Epic across its entire supported network. Alongside PDS sits Wellfit Technologies, an Irving, TX fintech which offers dental plans, patient financing, and payment processing and which built the payments layer connecting Epic's patient portal to PDS dentists.
From Pacific Dental Services to PDS Health
In 2024, Pacific Dental Services announced its transformation into PDS Health. The new PDS Health represented more than just a new name – the rebrand signified a move to become a comprehensive healthcare support organization, and expansion beyond dentistry into medical primary care and dental-medical integration. Stephen E. Thorne IV, who founded Pacific Dental in 1994, remained as CEO.
PDS Health has significant scale, supporting more than 1,000 dental and primary care practices across 24 states and over 15,000 clinical and support team members. Revenues topped $3.1 billion in 2025. The PDS Health organization now includes:
the supported dental practices within the “Smile Generation-trusted network” (the consumer brand fronting patient search, patient financing, and the MyChart portal)
the Smile Generation Dental Plan
a medical arm, PDS Health Medical, supporting physician-led primary care practices that are integrated with patient’s dental care
a joint venture with California-based MemorialCare
and PDS Health Technologies, a business unit launched in 2025 to sell its Epic-based platform and revenue cycle services to other provider organizations.
PDS Health + Epic Systems
PDS Health began implementing Epic Wisdom – Epic's dedicated dentistry module – in April 2020, becoming the first DSO in the world to do so. The system is now live across more than 1,000 locations. Patient-facing operations run through Smile Generation MyChart, where patients schedule, complete paperwork, message their care team, and pay bills. PDS also has had a formal seat at Epic's product table. Charles Rodgers, DDS, PDS Health's Vice President of Clinical Quality, has served multiple terms on Epic’s Dentistry Steering Board, a 12-member advisory panel drawn from dental schools, DSOs, FQHCs, and community and research hospitals.
PDS Health Technologies now resells its dental-optimized Epic instance to third parties through Epic's Community Connect program. As of late 2025, this platform served over 13 million unique patients and processed more than half of all dental visits recorded in Epic globally. Its academic partners include the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, the University of the Pacific's Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, and Roseman University of Health Sciences College of Dental Medicine.
Wellfit Technologies
Wellfit and PDS Technologies are closely linked. Stephen Thorne was Wellfit's founding board chairman, and PDS was the first organization in dentistry to implement both Epic Wisdom and Wellfit. Wellfit’s Epic integration delivers unified payments, financing, and dental plans, with near real-time settlement.
Wellfit works with other dental providers as well. According to the company, it has deployed across more than 900 practices, sold over 355,000 dental plans, and processed more than $2 billion in payments. It partners with Patterson Dental on CarePay+, an integrated financing, dental plan, and payment processing bundle for Eaglesoft practices (an alternative for Eaglesoft users to Patterson's incumbent Global Payments Integrated solution).
Patient financing options
With the introduction of Wellfit, the patient financing ecosystem shifted at PDS Health. CareCredit, which has anchored dental financing for decades and is still accepted at PDS Health-affiliated practices, no longer appears among the financing options listed on Smile Generation's website. Instead, within the “Smile Generation Financing Marketplace”, patients see a Wellfit-powered prequalification portal used in-office at treatment planning, where a soft credit pull returns offers from the Smile Generation Financial Credit Card (issued by Comenity), Proceed Finance, OneMain Financial, and HFD.
Epic's dental footprint beyond PDS
PDS is Epic’s largest dental deployment, but not the only one. Epic has said its dental use now extends to roughly 1,800 dental practices and multiple dental schools. Academic dentistry has been an early adopter: UT Health San Antonio's School of Dentistry went live on Wisdom in December 2024, replacing axiUm across its UT Dentistry clinics, and The Ohio State University College of Dentistry migrated to Wisdom within the Wexner Medical Center's Epic environment. The University of Kentucky College of Dentistry moved to Epic in conjunction with UK HealthCare. Community health centers in the OCHIN network and hospital-based dental programs have added Wisdom as well. The emerging pattern is that when a health system or academic medical center already runs Epic, they often shift their dental care to Epic so patients are on the same chart.
The future
Epic’s natural entry point into dentistry has proceeded slowly through existing Epic hospital and university customers adding its dental module. Now – in addition to PDS Health’s 1,000+ dental practices – it is gaining access to more dental schools and health systems through PDS Health Technologies. This seeds Epic and its workflows into the training of the next generation of dentists. Epic appears poised to challenge Henry Schein’s Dentrix, Patterson’s Eaglesoft, and a few other leading dental platforms. Which DSO will be next up to partner with Epic?
INDUSTRY NEWS
Adyen wins LillyDirect payment contract
In the fast growing business of selling GLP-1s and certain other prescribed medicines directly to consumers, Adyen has announced that Eli Lilly recently selected it to facilitate payment services through LillyDirect. According to Matt Fanelli, Head of Health and Wellness at Adyen, "The U.S. healthcare industry is undergoing a shift toward direct-to-consumer models, and simpler payment options can play a critical role in how patients experience new digital platforms."
In other news covering global payment fintechs, Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) has signed a partnership with Stripe to integrate CareCredit financing into the Stripe online checkout experience. Medical, dental, cosmetic, and veterinary providers in the CareCredit network using Stripe will be able to offer CareCredit financing at checkout, initially for standard card transactions and six-month promotional financing options. This deal makes it easier for CareCredit cardholders to take advantage of financing options with easier implementation and less operational complexity for the provider.
New fintech PlexPay launches for healthcare providers
Newport News, CA-based PlexPay is now offering patient financing and payment processing services to elective care practices including dental providers. The new program leverages Avvance, the embedded point-of-sale lending solution from U.S. Bank. The program allows providers to offer financing from $300 to $25,000, including 0% APR options for qualified applicants. Brendon Kensel, Founder & CEO of PlexPay, says the company is shortening the approval time by 75%, cutting what used to take 20 minutes down to less than five minutes.
Michael Thomas, EVP, Head of Corporate & Institutional Banking, PNC Bank
Michael Thomas, EVP and Head of Corporate & Institutional Banking for PNC Bank, joined us recently to talk about healthcare as a strategic priority and PNC's focus on healthcare banking. Michael explains how PNC helps healthcare organizations navigate industry change, improve financial performance, and achieve their strategic objectives through specialized solutions and strategic advisory support. Click here to view the video or here to read his comments on our CEO Chat blog.
DEAL NEWS
Candid Health raises $120M Series D financing
San Francisco-based Candid Health, formed seven years ago to modernize the revenue cycle process at healthcare providers, announced a $120 million Series D funding round led by Sixth Street Growth with participation from Oak HC/ FT, 8VC, and Y Combinator. Candid Health’s revenue cycle management platform, which is built for large healthcare providers, brings together clinical, billing, and other data into a single model. This gives its AI engine full context to be more effective. Its rules engine and AI agents now do the manual work that billing teams used to do. The company's annual contracted run rate revenue growth has grown 190% year over year.
Procode AI lands $10M Series A for specialist expansion
Health Velocity Capital recently announced that it led a $10 million Series A investment in Los Angeles-based Procode AI to enable the company to invest in all surgical specialties and ambulatory surgical center (ASC) billing. Currently, Procode AI works with 350 plastic surgery and dermatology providers through its acquisition of The Auctus Group. The newly funding will back two additional acquisitions, which will be announced in the months ahead.
Practice software Flagler Health raises $50M Series B
New York-based Flagler Health, an AI-driven platform for musculoskeletal (MSK) healthcare, announced that it has raised a $50 million Series B financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from SignalFire, Alumni Ventures, Streamlined, 186 Ventures, Proof VC, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Offscript.
Flagler is the only full-stack platform purpose-built for MSK, and addresses traditional infrastructure issues, not just workflows. It is trained on one of the largest MSK patient data sets, and integrates directly into existing EMRs. Flagler orchestrates the full patient lifecycle, across triage, care management, billing and patient communications.
Stripe, Block, and Advent offer $53B to acquire PayPal. Excellent discussion of Stripe and Advent's potential bid for PayPal and the implications for digital business futures. Begins at 20:00 and runs for 17 minutes (All In Podcast)
Healthcare Fintech Forum
We're excited to be hosting the inaugural Healthcare Fintech Forum in Nashville from November 9-11, 2026. Learn more here and enter your information to request an invitation. If you have already received an invitation and would like to register, click here. Early bird pricing is good through September 15.
Conference List. Rolling twelve month look ahead at conferences and other events covering healthcare payments, revenue cycle, fintech and related areas. Updated through November 2026.
FMP Blog. Thoughts from healthcare payments CEOs and investors on their right to win and goals for the year ahead, as well as data and perspectives on healthcare payments.
Newsletter Archive. News, trends, and insights from the healthcare payments industry compiled in our bi-weekly newsletter. Last six months of newsletters.
Epic MyChart. Excel sheet with full listing of all Epic MyChart instances as of May 2024, categorized by state, provider type and specialty. Updated when new Epic installs are publicized.
All of these resources can also be accessed at the FinMed Partners Insights page.
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FinMed Partners is a management consulting and advisory business focusing at the intersection of payments/ fintech and healthcare. Our founders have developed deep expertise from decades of experience with health IT companies, healthcare providers and many players within the payments ecosystem. Investors, boards and executive teams work with us to maximize business value through strategic input and tactical execution.
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