How we describe insurance
Where each piece of coverage information comes from, and what you still need to check.
Always confirm with the facility and your plan
Insurance information changes, and a facility can leave a network without telling anyone who lists it. Nothing on this site verifies your specific benefits. Before you commit to treatment, confirm two things directly: that the facility is in network for your plan, and what you would pay if it is not. This directory does not check benefits on anyone’s behalf and is not paid to route you to a particular programme.
Where our coverage information comes from
Three sources, and they are not equally strong.
The insurer’s own filing. Health insurers selling plans on the ACA marketplace must publish machine-readable directories of the providers in their networks. Where we can match a facility to one of those filings by its national provider identifier and its address, that is the strongest evidence available: the carrier itself says it contracts with that location. These filings cover marketplace plans only — not employer plans, Medicare Advantage or Medicaid managed care.
The facility’s own website. Where a treatment centre names the insurers it works with, we record what it says. This is the facility’s claim about itself, which is worth a great deal and is not the same as a contract.
The federal treatment survey. SAMHSA publishes an annual directory in which facilities report what they accept. It covers Medicaid, Medicare and TRICARE well and commercial insurers barely.
What we mean by “major insurance”
Many treatment centres say they accept “most major insurance” without naming any insurer. That is a real statement and we would rather show it to you than discard it, so where a facility says this and names nobody, we list it under each of the carriers below.
On this site, major insurance means: Aetna, Ambetter, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Molina Healthcare, UnitedHealthcare.
Two things follow from that, and they matter.
A listing that reached one of those pages this way reflects the facility’s general statement, not a specific claim about that insurer. And accepting an insurer is not the same as being in network with it. Many programmes — particularly private-pay and residential ones — are deliberately out of network and will bill your plan for part of the cost instead. That can be a perfectly good option, and it is a different financial position from in-network care. Ask which one applies to you.
We do not treat Medicaid, Medicare or TRICARE as “major insurance” for this purpose. A facility saying it takes major insurance is not claiming to accept those programmes, and they are recorded separately from what facilities report directly.
Telling us we have it wrong
If you run a facility listed here and the coverage information is wrong, tell us and we will change it. A correction from the facility outranks every other source we hold.