How secondary insurance works on Headway
We use insurer portals to pull a client’s benefit information and can identify which plan is primary vs. secondary when submitting claims.
- If a client mistakenly enters their secondary plan as their primary plan, our system will automatically reorder them to ensure claims are submitted correctly — no action required from you or your client.
- At session confirmation, your client is charged based on their primary insurance estimate. This initial estimate does not account for any secondary coverage.
- You will continue to be paid according to the rates of the client’s primary insurance plan.
- After the session, we’ll submit claims to both their primary and secondary insurance plans. Secondary insurers require us to submit the primary insurer’s claim first; once it's processed, they determine what they'll cover.
- After we receive responses from both insurers, we’ll update the client's final cost (this can take up to 90 days). Most clients with secondary insurance receive a refund because their secondary plan covers additional costs.
A note on network status and eligibility
There are cases where we may be in-network with a client’s primary insurance plan, but not with their secondary plan. If this happens, the client can still continue care using their primary benefits — but we won’t be able to submit claims to their secondary insurer.
There are also situations where Headway is in-network with the secondary plan, but you as the individual provider aren’t credentialed with that insurer. If a client wants to use both their primary and secondary benefits, they can enter both plans in the search filters on headway.co to find a provider who is credentialed with and can bill both plans.
Resolving coordination of benefits issues
Clients have to recertify their coordination of benefits (COB) yearly and are the only ones who can do this; providers cannot do this on behalf of a client.
The most direct way for clients to update or confirm their COB is to call the insurance number on the back of the insurance ID card. They can say “My provider let me know there’s an issue with my coordination of benefits—could you let me know which of my plans is primary?”
Headway cannot reach out on their behalf.
Once they have confirmed that their coordination of benefits has been updated on the insurance carrier’s end, reach out to us with a reference number.
Resolving a paused account
If your client's account has been paused, it's because their insurance plan let us know that there’s an issue with their coordination of benefits. This update is something that only the client can do, and there is no action required on your end.
Your client should have received an email from us with clear instructions (who to call and what to say) on how to resolve this. They must follow those steps in order to have their account unpaused and be able to continue sessions on Headway.
If they do not complete this, their Headway account will be paused until they can make this update.