Growing and managing a practice can be challenging, but what if you could work smarter, not harder, to improve efficiency? As an eye care provider, it's essential to have technological solutions that streamline your operations and enable you to efficiently review patient records while automatically sending targeted messages to your patients with unused benefits. By leveraging these innovative solutions, you can focus more on what truly matters—providing exceptional care for your patients.
What is ABB Verify?
ABB Verify offers a comprehensive solution that streamlines insurance verification, allowing practices to save time and improve operational efficiency. By streamlining this process and informing patients about their unused benefits, the practice can dedicate more attention to patient care. This ultimately results in higher patient satisfaction and a more successful practice.
ABB Verify provides a powerful, centralized platform that enables staff to quickly determine patient eligibility and engage with them, empowering patients to maximize their benefits like never before. There are three versions of ABB Verify available: ABB Verify Messaging, ABB Verify Complete, and ABB Verify Demand.
ABB Verify Messaging
ABB Verify Messaging is a benefits messaging software that automatically informs patients about their unused benefits, encouraging them to schedule an appointment or purchase eyewear and contact lenses. This increases the capture rate and revenue per patient (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Benefits of ABB Verify Messaging
The goal of ABB Messaging (Figures 2 and 3) is to drive action; it is not a recall system or a broadcast messaging tool. To receive these messages, patients must have an active clinical relationship and should not be scheduled for a visit at the time of receipt. These messages highlight available benefits and are sent periodically, prioritizing those whose benefits are set to expire first. Each patient will receive one email and one text message per month, delivered during business hours.
Figure 2. ABB Messaging - Full Benefits Available & Figure 3. ABB Messaging - Material-Only Benefit
The messages use the practice’s branding and encourage patients to schedule appointments online. Highly motivated patients with available benefits lead to higher conversion rates and revenue per patient. There is an opt-out option, but the opt-out rate is less than 1%. On the practice side, monthly performance summaries are available to help monitor the return on investment (ROI).
ABB Verify Complete
ABB Verify Complete provides a comprehensive solution that includes ABB Messaging, a real-time eligibility check, and an automatic insurance eligibility verification tool. This tool verifies vision in-network benefits for all scheduled patient appointments and can also confirm medical benefits through TriZetto. It seamlessly integrates with the practice’s scheduling system, automatically retrieving patient eligibility information and enabling real-time checks of insurance details. Additionally, it is compatible with the following leading cloud-based or server-based practice management systems:
The automated eligibility check feature is linked to the practice’s scheduler (Figure 4). It shows the appointment date, type, time, status, doctor, and available insurance plans. If a plan is found, you can confirm the eligibility details and automatically retrieve the authorization. It can also identify whether a patient has secondary insurance. Options for retrieving information in advance include 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before. It will display a message if an error occurs, allowing you to connect with the patient to confirm the necessary details and ensure eligibility before the appointment.
Figure 4. Automated Eligibility Checker
ABB Verify On-Demand
ABB Verify On-Demand is a streamlined search engine that swiftly confirms patient insurance in under a minute, without needing integration with a practice management system (Figure 5). This tool performs real-time eligibility checks and retrieves eligibility details, displaying information about in-network payers. It is especially beneficial for multi-location practices.
Figure 5. ABB Verify On-Demand
To use the system, if the patient is a subscriber, only the patient's name, date of birth, and residence location are needed. For dependents, the subscriber's information is also required. If the name is misspelled, the system can find matches for commonly misspelled names. It provides results showing a scorecard with a match percentage, although the practice must verify that the result corresponds to the correct patient. Importantly, it does not ask for the patient's Social Security number. A notable feature of this system is its ability to identify whether a patient has multiple insurance plans.
Why Practices Are Choosing ABB Verify
Bryan Hoban, along with Drs. Hoban, Flores, and Vaccarella share their firsthand experiences of onboarding and utilizing ABB Verify in their practices. They also discuss the benefits they have achieved, such as increased revenue, enhanced efficiency, and the ability to analyze how ABB Verify has impacted their practices.
Increase Practice Revenue
Some practices can achieve returns of up to 33x on their investment, which can translate to approximately $15,000 a month, depending on the practice size. When Dr. Hoban and Bryan Hoban acquired practices that needed rapid growth and a solid ROI, they chose to use ABB Verify to boost revenue and achieve their goal.
Approximately 60% of practices that stop using ABB Verify eventually come back because they recognize the potential for increased revenue. For example, Dr. Vaccarella's practice became so busy that he temporarily discontinued using ABB Verify. However, when the schedule began to slow down, he decided to return to the service.
Due to the limited budget that optometrists allocate for marketing, ABB Verify has become a valuable addition to the marketing tools used by many optometry practices.
ABB Verify helps reduce write-offs and underpayments associated with vision care insurance for practices. The insurance eligibility checker minimizes empty chair time caused by patient confusion over their benefits eligibility. Furthermore, it shortens the time between visits for patients receiving vision care.
Some practices encounter up to 20% of patients who have unused benefits. Informing patients about these benefits during the handoff can help convert vision care patients into optical sales, potentially generating over $550 in revenue for a second pair of glasses. By using reminders about unused benefits, practices can reach out to patients who did not purchase eyewear or contact lenses during their visit. Approximately 5% of patients who receive these reminders book an appointment within 30 days.
Boost Practice Efficiency
ABB Verify improves the efficiency of practices by streamlining staff workflows and enhancing patient retention. With ABB Verify, staff spend less time on administrative tasks. ABB Verify Complete identifies patients with unused benefits and sends them notifications, eliminating the need for staff to manually identify and cold-call patients for their annual visits.
Each practice can utilize ABB Verify in various ways. Dr. Vaccarella, one of the early adopters, uses ABB Verify uniquely. As the owner of several LensCrafters subleases, he primarily employs ABB Verify to identify patients with unused contact lens benefits instead of for insurance verification purposes. This tool has been crucial in helping him fill his patient schedules while working seamlessly in the background. However, as some insurance plans have become more challenging to access, having a centralized location to quickly retrieve patient information has proven highly beneficial.
Staff members can quickly access patient information and verify up to 14 in-network payors, eliminating the need for manual data searches and resulting in up to a 40% reduction in the time spent locating information. Additionally, the software is user-friendly, and staff receive training to ensure they use it effectively.
ABB Verify is a single platform for training staff on insurance verification, enhancing the patient experience in optometry practices. Dr. Hoban and the team at Peak Vision Clinic have observed that the online scheduling software indicates most patients are using reminder emails to schedule recall appointments.
ABB Verify enhances patient retention by enabling doctors to deliver a more memorable patient experience. It fosters the impression that the practice is easy to engage with and encourages face-to-face interactions. When patients receive an email or text, it is tailored to provide them with information about the available benefits. The link in the message or email allows patients to schedule an appointment online.
Data and Analytics
One of the best features of ABB Verify is the Practice Dashboard reporting function, which helps analyze how effectively practices are utilizing ABB Verify. The monthly activity report includes:
- The number of patients who received messages regarding unused benefits and took action
- The number of plans identified from cross-checking insurance plans
- The number of patients discovered with secondary insurance pair benefits
- The number of patients with secondary insurance.
For example, Dr. Flores determined that by using ABB Verify, 3,500 patients were analyzed, 1,500 were found to have benefits, resulting in the creation of 350 appointments.
Dr. Vaccarella shared two dashboards from his practice for April 2025, shown in Figures 6 and 7. These dashboards provide a breakdown of the number of patients analyzed, the number of patients identified with available benefits, the number of messages sent, the number of appointments created, and the revenue generated for the month. In his case, one practice generated approximately $22,500, while the other generated around $10,000 from unused benefits.
Figure 6. Dr. Vaccarella’s Practice Dashboard
Onboarding
Onboarding is easy and seamless with ABB Verify. Depending on the practice, it took about 2 to 3 weeks and was entirely guided by the ABB Verify team. It begins with a business associate agreement (BAA), a signed contract, and staff training. Each practice has a dedicated customer success representative to help ensure ABB Verify is used to its full potential. ABB Verify Messaging requires minimal setup and operates behind the scenes, with no additional involvement needed from practices.
