At Headway, it’s important that all clients are receiving safe and appropriate care and that, as a provider, your time and practice are treated with respect. Each client's identity must be verified in order to mitigate the risk of concerning patient behaviors, including (but not limited to):
- Falsification of insurance information
- False identification, and
- Attempting to obtain prescriptions from multiple providers
How client identity is verified
For insurance clients
Headway verifies client demographic information prior to claims filing, based on what the client enters for their insurance information. We ensure that the client's name, date of birth, and insurance member ID matches the information their insurer has on file.
For private pay clients
Headway relies on providers to confirm their clients' identity upon intake.
Sometimes, clients will attempt to use third party sites (i.e. Psychology Today, Zocdoc, etc.) to make contact with providers, providing realistic-sounding insurance member IDs, or even falsified insurance cards, in order to gain access to the Headway platform. Once they enter their insurance information, and it shows as unverified due to the identity mismatch, these clients request to move to private pay.
For all clients
Our expectation is that all providers adhere to our Client Demographic Integrity Policy, to ensure that the individual receiving care matches the information of the individual being billed on the platform.
This means checking your client’s government ID, and ensuring that it matches their insurance information for insurance sessions, or entering the client’s demographic information that aligns with their government ID for private pay sessions (including correct spellings).
At this time, Headway does not automatically collect or compare client government identification to the client’s identity, or to the insurance information provided; however, we may do this on an ad hoc basis.
We are always evaluating product improvements we can make to the Headway platform. If we make this feature available, we'll let you know!
Best practices when starting with a new client
- Ask about, and document, the patient’s current medications
- Ask if the patient is receiving services from any other provider. Obtain releases of information as needed so that care can be coordinated
- Document any concerns you have about the client's behavior in your session documentation (i.e. progress notes)
- If you are prescribing controlled substances, reference your state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) to ensure that the client is appropriately receiving controlled substances
- Document the appropriate PDMP protocols in your session documentation
For general questions about the patient identity verification processes, please contact us via our contact form.
If you have concerns that a patient is misrepresenting their identity, malingering, or seeking controlled substances from multiple providers, please contact us at compliance@findheadway.com so we can help. When making a report, it’s most helpful to add your documentation to your appointments for the client(s) so that we can review it as part of the investigation process.