Is your VOB process instant?

If it is - congratulations, you don’t need this blog post. You can click away now.

If it’s not - you have our sympathies. (And we can fix that for you, if you like!)

Non-instant (or traditional) VOB processes aren’t just annoying and time-consuming, they are expensive. 

The delay between initial contact and completed VOB is a critical window for your potential patients. Make it too long and you will most certainly lose business.

People who want addiction treatment usually want it NOW - not tomorrow, not next week. If you waste time hemming and hawing about insurance coverage, they’ll move onto your competitors. 

Makes sense, right? 

So why aren’t your VOBs instant? 

Read on for more information about instant VOBs — also known as eVOBs — and how they could be a game changer for your addiction treatment center.

The Old Way of Doing VOBs for Addiction Treatment Takes Way Too Long 

A typical “traditional” VOB process looks like this: 

1. Your front desk asks insurance questions over the phone 

2. They type the insurance information into your EHR

3. Your potential client presents their insurance card in person and/or send copies of the card to front desk to safeguard against typos and patient error in this information sharing process 

4. Front desk phones the insurance company hotline on the back of the card

5. Front desk misses important phone calls while they’re on hold with the insurance company 

6. Front desk manually records information from the phone call with the insurance company, occasionally (or often) making small but costly errors 

7. Front desk makes another phone call to follow up with the patient 

Yikes. That’s seven steps with a lot of room for human error and misunderstanding. 

And, to top it off, this “fun” process can take up to an hour or more for each client.

If you’re still doing VOBs this way, you might be looking for a better idea. Or maybe you’re so used to this arduous task that you don’t think a better way is possible. 

Big news: There is a better way!

eVOBs are the Modern Solution to Addiction Treatment’s VOB Problem 

Let’s clear this up first: eVOB stands for electronic verification of benefits. 

eVOBs are a completely automated verification of benefits that cuts out all of labor intensive manual steps typically associated with VOBs. eVOBs are not a replacement for a full VOB - that comes next - but they are a great start that’s plenty “good enough” for confidently beginning the admissions process. 

eVOBs are: 

• Instant 

• Accurate 

• Effortless (no, really)

• Timesaving 

• Hassle-free

Here’s How eVOBs for Actually Work for Addiction Treatment Centers

When we say eVOBs are effortless, we mean it. Here’s how they work:

1. You grab an account with Behave Health’s all-in-one software solution for addiction treatment providers. (We even have a free account for you to try!)

2. Your would-be patient fills out the HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based admissions form you created using one of Behave Health’s super simple templates.

3. The eVOB is automatically generated based on the information entered by your potential patient.

4. There is no number 4. That’s it. 

Here’s What You Can Expect from All of Behave Health’s eVOBs 

• The type of plan your patient holds 

• The coverage details of your patient’s plan 

• Medical and/or pharmacy benefit data

• Settings of care information

• Notes on any special distribution requirements 

• Patient’s OOP costs 

• Patient’s progress towards meeting annual deductible for the year

• Plan start and end dates

• Policy restrictions 

• Any authorizations required

• Life time benefit maxim 

If that’s not enough, every eVOB also includes:

• Behave Health’s specific recommendations on how to best leverage the policy for optimum patient care

Need More Insurance Certainty than an eVOB can provide?

Of course you do - but not instantly. 

Our eVOBs are just the first tool in the stack of billing tools we’ve created for addiction treatment providers like you. 

After we serve up that automatic eVOB so you can get the ball rolling with your new patient, our billing specialists get to work on a full VOB right away. We pick up the phone and reach out to insurance companies and verify everything on your eVOB — and then some.

Not only do we have high-touch relationships with dedicated contacts at every major insurance provider in the country, we also have proprietary tools we use to extract better reimbursements and superior data from every full VOB we run. 

Behave Health’s Payer Database Leverages eVOBs to Help Keep Insurance Companies Honest

Behave Health also offers you exclusive access to some of the tools our billing specialists use in-house to keep insurance companies honest, including our payer database. 

Imagine what information you could arm yourself and your business with if you could access, sort and pull all of your reimbursement and coverage history instantly. 

On its own, the “big data” you can glean from the payer database is invaluable.  

There’s so many things you can do with the payer database - that’s why we have another blog post about how to leverage the payer database coming soon - but here’s a few ideas to get you started: 

• Easily spot coverage inconsistencies 

• Quickly identify “accidental” reimbursement shorts

• Compare insurance providers and plans

• Zero in on preferred carriers  

We’re Here to Help Your Addiction Treatment Center

Got more questions about eVOBs? 

Do eVOBs sound like something your business could use? 

Get your free trial started today and see why more addiction treatment centers prefer Behave Health.