Never Lose Revenue to Authorization Gaps
VGPM tracks every authorization unit and alerts your team 14 days before expiration.
VGPM is all-in-one ABA practice management software built for streamlined operations. Billing-optimized, automation-first, and simple enough for teams to learn in minutes. Flat $50/staff/month with optional operational services.
Authorization tracking inside VGPM follows a 6-step lifecycle from the moment an approval is received through renewal. Every unit is counted in real time, every expiration is flagged 14 days early, and the scheduler blocks any session that would exceed approved limits before the appointment is confirmed.
Four layers of protection between your practice and authorization-related claim denials. Each one catches problems that spreadsheets and manual tracking miss.
See remaining authorized units at a glance. Every scheduled and completed session deducts from the authorization balance automatically. No more end-of-month surprises when your biller discovers a client ran out of units three weeks ago.
Automatic alert 14 days before an authorization expires. Your designated authorizer is notified with a direct link to the client's authorizations. You'll never discover an expired authorization after sessions have already been delivered and billed.
The scheduler checks authorization limits before confirming appointments. If a client's units are exhausted or their auth is expired, booking is blocked with a clear explanation. This prevents the single most common billing error in ABA practices.
Every payer has different authorization requirements: 60-day vs. 180-day periods, 15-minute units vs. hours, different renewal timelines and documentation standards. VGPM stores payer-specific rules so your team applies the right standards without memorizing each payer's quirks.
ABA authorization management isn't like tracking office visit approvals. The combination of long sessions, multiple service codes, supervision requirements, and payer variation makes ABA authorizations one of the hardest operational challenges in behavioral health. Generic practice management software wasn't built for this complexity.
ABA sessions run 2 to 8 hours, not 15-minute office visits. A single session can consume 8 to 32 units depending on the payer's unit definition. One miscounted session can blow through a week's worth of authorized units.
A typical ABA session might include direct therapy (97153), supervision (97155), and parent training (97156), each with separate authorization limits. Tracking three unit balances per client per session is where spreadsheets fall apart.
Supervisor overlap sessions require authorization for both the RBT's direct therapy and the BCBA's supervision. Some payers authorize supervision hours separately. Others bundle them. Missing either authorization means the entire session gets denied.
Renewal windows range from 30 to 90 days before expiration depending on the payer. Some require updated treatment plans. Others need new assessments. Miss the window, and you're delivering unfunded care while paperwork catches up.
Parent training, assessment, direct therapy, and group therapy are each authorized separately. A client might have plenty of direct therapy units remaining but zero assessment hours. Your team needs to see all authorization balances at once, not hunt through separate approval letters.
Sessions delivered without valid authorization are denied retroactively. By the time you discover the gap, your clinician already provided the service, the family received care, and your practice absorbs the full cost. There is no appeals process for delivering services you were never authorized to provide.
These aren't hypotheticals. These are the exact situations that cost ABA practices thousands of dollars every month when authorization tracking is done manually.
Sessions delivered under active authorization. Claims paid without issue.
No gap in services. No denied claims. Treatment continued without interruption.
Authorization-related denials are an outsized share of preventable ABA claim denials. Industry estimates put them at 20 to 30% of all preventable denials, dominated by two patterns: services delivered after an authorization expired (RARC CO-197 and CO-15), and services that exceeded approved units.
Once those denials happen, recovery is hard. Industry consensus on ABA denial outcomes puts the appeal win rate for auth-related denials at roughly 5 to 20%, far below the 50 to 85% win rate seen on coding-error denials. Retroactive authorization is rarely granted by commercial payers, and Medicaid post-service auth review is uneven by state.
VGPM's authorization tracking is built around that asymmetry. Real-time unit balances, automatic 14-day expiration alerts, and pre-submission validation block the bulk of preventable auth-related denials before they happen. The handful that still slip through are handled by the denial management service.
Methodology: VGPM internal data across active practices, 2025-2026 billing cycles. Authorization-related denial share and appeal win rates reference industry consensus on ABA denial outcomes; specific RARC code references per CMS documentation. Industry first-pass benchmarks reference CAQH Healthcare Claim Cycle data.
Using the AI session notes features is saving me hours a week when it comes to documentation. And it does a great job.
Our therapist used to be weeks behind on documentation. VGPM makes it so easy, they are now finishing by the end of the session.
The automated billing make billing easy enough that I don't need to hire someone to do it full time.
I've never had a software company actually build something I asked for before.
It's so nice that VGPM has everything built in, unlike our last software that just had a bunch of integrations.
The scheduling locks saved us from a nightmare. We had an RBT working under an expired authorization for two weeks before we caught it at our old software. That can't happen in VGPM.
I can finally see where every dollar is in the revenue cycle without pulling reports from three different systems. The claims page alone was worth switching.
Data collection is actually usable with one hand during a session. I used to dread graphing at the end of the day. Now it's already done by the time I walk out.
We switched from CentralReach and we migrated everything in under three weeks. There were a few hiccups with payer setups, but they resolved them fast.
Denials used to pile up and I had no idea which ones to chase first. VGPM makes it easy to prioritize and manage them. I'm actually caught up for once.
The flat $50 per staff pricing is what got me to look, but the authorization tracking is what sold me. We stopped losing money on sessions that shouldn't have been scheduled.
Parents love the client portal. They can see upcoming sessions, review session notes, and pay their invoices without calling us. It cut our front desk phone volume in half.
Spreadsheet tracking with manual updates after every session
Real-time dashboard that updates automatically as sessions are scheduled and completed
Discovering expired authorizations after sessions have been delivered
Automatic alert 14 days before expiration
Accidentally scheduling sessions beyond authorized limits
Scheduler blocks booking when units are exhausted or auth is expired
Denied claims from authorization gaps, discovered weeks later
Pre-submission validation catches auth issues before claims go out
Calling payers to check remaining units for each client
One dashboard showing every client's utilization, expiration, and status
Need help managing authorizations and billing together? VG Soft Co's Revenue Cycle Management service pairs VGPM's authorization tracking with a dedicated billing team that handles re-authorization submissions, payer follow-ups, and denial management on your behalf.
VGPM tracks every authorization unit, alerts your team 14 days before expiration, and blocks any session that exceeds approved limits. Your first look takes 15 minutes.
