Tend books thousands of appointments a week across 33 studios and promises members transparent treatment plans and predictable billing. That promise starts with insurance verification. Here is how Tend moved it to Ventus, and what changed.
The results
Dental DSO · 33 locations · Insurance verificationThe challenge
Tend's operations team owns the first step of the revenue cycle: get the insurance from the member, verify it, and load it into the system so the studio can build a treatment plan. At 17% auto-verification, almost every check went to a manual queue, and the queue decided when it was done.
That cost more than staff time. When a verification wasn't ready before the appointment, the studio had no estimate to show. In Aubree's words, members were being sent home without a treatment plan. So it resulted in less case starts.
For a group that sells transparent, predictable billing, a member leaving without an estimate is lost treatment.
Since 2019 Tend had worked with three verification vendors. Each normalized payer data, but none returned the complete picture, so the gaps fell back on Tend's team. Benefits from payer portals were a lot of touch and go.
Tend is one of the most technical DSOs Ventus works with, and its engineers tried to close the gap themselves, but the payers don't make that possible: you're hundreds and they're all different. None of them are standardized.
How Ventus works with Tend's team
Verification starts the moment a member sends their insurance, whether it's same day or whether it's seven days ahead.
Ventus checks eligibility and benefits with the payer, including the portals of Tend's biggest payers, and brings back what the studio needs to chart-prep: frequencies, downgrades, waiting periods and history.
Ventus works to Tend's rules, not its own. Each case closes with Tend's own result labels, such as eligible, ineligible because coverage ended, or missing information like a member ID. Plan types the studios handle differently, such as HMO or copay plans, are flagged for the team. Cases that need a person go back to Tend's team with the reason attached, so nobody starts from zero.
Each finished verification is published into Tend's practice management system as an insurance plan. That matters because you can't do bulk operations in our practice management system. It's very, very, very cumbersome for humans specifically to put insurance data into.
When a payer portal changes, Tend flags it and Ventus fixes it fast: it's almost to where the member doesn't even feel it.
Because the product already existed, Tend started from a working system, not a build project. It went live in about a month: you all coming to us with a product that's already created really helped us speed up the process of getting that auto verification rate up.
The results
- 80%+
of verifications close automatically, up from 17%. Most checks never reach a person, so the manual queue no longer decides when a member gets an estimate.
- 100%
of outsourced verification brought onto Ventus. Half of it was gone within two months; the outside team has since been cut entirely.
- 99–100%
on Tend's own weekly QA. Tend audits a sample of charts every week against its own standards; Ventus scored 100%, 99% and 100% in October.
| Measure | Before Ventus | With Ventus |
|---|---|---|
| Verified ahead of the visit | 2–3 days out, when the queue allowed | Up to 7 days out, and same day for last-minute visits |
| Benefits from payer portals | Partial, from three vendors in seven years | Frequencies, downgrades, waiting periods and history on every check |
| Into the practice management system | Keyed in by hand, one plan at a time | Published automatically as an insurance plan |
| Time to results | Seven years and three vendors | Live in a month; half the outsourced load gone in two; all of it since |
Studios now have the estimate ready as the member walks in: the studios are more prepared and the member has more transparency of their estimates and of how their visit is going to go.
And with the queue gone, Aubree's team spends its time on bigger, cross-department projects.
“I've been through the challenge of finding eligibility data for all seven years of Tend's existence. And within two months, Ventus solved that problem.”
David BolingStaff Engineer, Tend“We evaluated several insurance verification solutions before partnering with Ventus, and the difference has been remarkable. What really sets Ventus apart is the depth and accuracy of their verifications. They're capturing the details our RCM team actually needs, including waiting periods, downgrades, frequencies, and other benefit nuances that many vendors simply couldn't provide. They've become a true extension of our Revenue Cycle team, helping us improve efficiency while giving our teams greater confidence in the information they're working from.”
Joanna FritzDirector of Revenue Cycle Management, Tend