What each status and message means
A quick reference for anything Insurance Verification puts on screen. The Cost column is the one worth reading first: several failures are free, and knowing which ones stops your team paying to re-run something that was never going to work — or something that was already coming back for free.
Status badges
Section titled “Status badges”| Badge | What it means | Cost | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verified | Coverage confirmed | Billed | Nothing — read the benefits |
| Inactive insurance | The carrier says this plan isn’t active | Billed | Confirm with the patient; it’s re-checked on its own after a couple of weeks |
| Unable to verify | The carrier received the check and couldn’t match this patient | Billed | Fix the member details in Open Dental, then verify again |
| Error | The check didn’t complete | Depends — see below | Read the Coverage alerts section in the drawer |
| Pending | A check is in flight | — | Wait and refresh |
| Not verified | Insured, never checked | — | Run a check |
| No insurance | No plan on file in Open Dental | — | Add the plan in Open Dental |
Free refusals — no check sent, nothing billed
Section titled “Free refusals — no check sent, nothing billed”All of these begin “No check was run (no charge)” or show a dedicated state. Teamio declines to send them because the carrier would reject them anyway.
| Message | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No check was run (no charge) — fix this in Open Dental: {detail} | The record is missing something the carrier requires | Fix the field in Open Dental |
| Set a billing provider in Precheck settings to run verification. | No billing provider configured | Set one — until then nothing verifies |
| This carrier isn’t mapped to a payer yet — add a mapping in Precheck settings. | Teamio can’t tell which payer this carrier is | Map it |
| This patient has no active insurance on file to verify. | No active plan | Add or activate the plan in Open Dental |
| Can’t be verified electronically | The payer doesn’t offer electronic eligibility at all | Phone the payer. Re-checking will never work |
| {Carrier} is excluded from electronic verification… | You put this carrier on the exclusion list | Verify by phone, or remove the exclusion |
The record problems Teamio blocks on
Section titled “The record problems Teamio blocks on”These show as amber chips in Action required:
- Missing member ID — no member ID on the plan.
- Placeholder member ID — the field holds something like
NONE,N/A,TBD,SELF, a single character, or all zeros. - Missing subscriber name — no subscriber name.
- Missing subscriber DOB — no subscriber date of birth.
- Invalid subscriber DOB — the date on file isn’t usable.
Amber means to-do, not alarm. Each one is a field in Open Dental, and each one is free to discover.
Failures that do cost money
Section titled “Failures that do cost money”These reached the carrier, which is what makes them billable — the carrier received the request and answered.
| What you see | What happened | Retried? |
|---|---|---|
| Unable to verify | The carrier couldn’t match this patient — usually a wrong member ID, name, or date of birth | No. Fix the details |
| Error — payer system temporarily unavailable | The carrier’s system was down or busy | Yes, automatically and free |
| Error — a provider/NPI problem | The practice’s billing provider isn’t recognised or enrolled by that carrier. This is a practice-level problem, not a patient one | No. Check your billing provider, then contact Teamio |
| Error — an unexpected problem | Something on Teamio’s side | No. It’s logged; contact Teamio if it repeats |
| Inactive insurance | The carrier says the plan isn’t active | Re-checked automatically after about two weeks |
Other messages
Section titled “Other messages””This check is still running — refresh in a moment to see the result.”
Section titled “”This check is still running — refresh in a moment to see the result.””Not an error. The check outlived the page’s waiting time and is finishing in the background. Refresh shortly — the result will be there, and it isn’t billed twice.
”Verification isn’t enabled for this practice.”
Section titled “”Verification isn’t enabled for this practice.””Either the feature is off for your site, or an admin has turned off Insurance verification on-demand in Precheck settings.
”Verification failed. Please try again.”
Section titled “”Verification failed. Please try again.””A transient problem submitting the request. Try once more; if it persists, contact Teamio.
Name Suffix In Od
Section titled “Name Suffix In Od”An amber alert meaning the patient’s name in Open Dental has a generational suffix — Jr., Sr., II, III — typed into the first or last name field, because Open Dental has no separate suffix column.
Teamio moves the suffix to the right place on the wire so the check still works, but the record is worth cleaning up. Note that ambiguous cases are deliberately left alone: a lone V or I could be a middle initial, and Junior and Senior are real given names.
Coverage alerts inside the drawer
Section titled “Coverage alerts inside the drawer”| Alert | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Maximum reached | The annual maximum is used up |
| Maximum nearly reached | Close to the limit — worth mentioning before treatment |
| Waiting period | A waiting period applies to some categories |
| Frequency used up | An allowance for a procedure is exhausted |
”Why wasn’t this patient verified overnight?”
Section titled “”Why wasn’t this patient verified overnight?””Work down this list:
- Do they have insurance on file? Uninsured patients are never checked.
- Were they verified recently? Look at Last verified. If it’s inside your re-verification window, they were deliberately skipped and nothing was billed — that’s the system saving you money, not missing a patient.
- Is there an amber chip on them? A blocked record is refused for free until it’s fixed in Open Dental.
- Is the carrier excluded, or unable to verify electronically? Those are phone calls.
- Was the appointment booked after the daily run? Turn on Verify on new booking, or verify by hand.
- Does one particular carrier fail overnight but succeed by day? Some carriers take their systems down overnight. Move your run time later — see Automatic verification.
- Is automation actually on? Automatic precheck ships off and has to be switched on deliberately.
A note on blanks
Section titled “A note on blanks”Dashes and empty sections are normal. Carriers differ enormously in what they return — some send rich per-procedure detail, some send accumulators but nothing per code, some send very little. Teamio prints what the carrier actually said and leaves a dash where it said nothing, rather than filling the gap with a guess you might quote to a patient.