So, I think they are connected, but treatment is quite separate. It depends on what can be verified and your symptoms. For me, I had a tongue tie, muscle based TMJ, and Eagles. So a number of factors in a small area with overlapping symptoms and sort of overlapping treatment. I did therapy and surgery for the tongue tie, symptoms persist, treatment for the TMJ, symptoms persist, and am set for my first Eagles surgery on Monday, quite confident symptoms will go away. These are all treated by different Drs and the only role a Dentist played was making a hard night guard that initially was to prevent clenching at night, but since I know I don’t clench at night it acts more like a retainer because during my tongue tie treatment I did the Myobrace system, which moved my teeth a little.
Is your TMJ more joint based or muscle based? Joint based meaning the joints are damaged, if not, then it is probably muscle based. I had great treatment by a physical therapist for that, with dry needling being the main treatment (covered by medical). The splint I had made is a dental appliance, so dental coverage. The tongue tie treatment actually used my orthodontic benefit because it involved moving my teeth, like braces would. Your best bet is to get things pre-authorized before treatment, or ask the provider for what codes they will use and then call your insurance and ask them directly about coverage with those codes at that provider. Usually dental offices can only use dental codes, granted, since my night guard was for TMJ, my insurance was able to cover it under my medical benefit, but it was an annoying process that took 4+ months to resolve.
You are in CO, Dr. Hepworth is arguably the best, but that means his waitlist is long. Your best bet is to get diagnosis and treatment plans for everything and then you can decide what you want to do first weighing factors like cost, insurance coverage, schedule, etc