When you compare billing, credentialing and coding companies, you need to know which information you can rely on and which is advertising. Every profile on PracticeVendors carries a label that tells you exactly that. This guide explains what each label means, what we check before we give it, and the rules we follow so that no company can buy its way to the top.
The Four Labels
| Label | What it means | What we checked |
|---|---|---|
| Unclaimed | Nobody from the company manages the listing yet. | The facts come from the company’s own public website. |
| Claimed | Someone who works at the company manages the listing. | They confirmed it with an email address on the company’s own domain. |
| Verified | The business is real and its main profile claims hold up. | We checked evidence, such as business registration and the main facts on the profile. |
| Sponsored | The company paid for extra visibility. | Paid placement is always labeled, and it never changes a company’s other labels. |
The full details are in our methodology.
Claimed Is Not Verified
A claimed profile tells you the company is real enough to answer email at its own domain and that someone there now keeps the profile up to date. It does not tell you the profile is accurate. That is why a claimed profile still says “not yet verified” until we have checked the facts against evidence. We keep that line even when a company is a good partner of the site, because it is what a practice needs to know.
How a Profile Moves From Unclaimed to Verified
The company does
- Claims the listing with a work email
- Updates its details and website link
- Sends evidence if it wants to be verified
PracticeVendors does
- Confirms the email domain matches the company
- Checks the evidence against the profile
- Changes the label only when the check passes
What Can Never Be Bought
- Verification. A company is verified because the evidence holds up, never because it paid or because it placed our badge on its website.
- Badges. The PracticeVendors badge a company shows on its website always reflects its real status on our site, and it changes or disappears by itself if that status changes.
- Reviews. We do not sell, write or remove reviews for money. Federal rules ban buying fake reviews and suppressing honest ones (16 CFR Part 465).
- Facts. A profile says only what the company’s website or the company itself states, or what we have checked. Where something is unknown, the profile says so.
How Sponsored Placement Works
Basic listings are free for companies. If a company pays for extra visibility, the listing is labeled Sponsored wherever it appears, in line with the FTC’s guidance that paid relationships must be clearly disclosed (16 CFR Part 255). Sponsored placement does not make a company Verified, does not change its reviews and does not hide other companies.
What This Means for Practices
- Use the label as your starting point, not your final answer. Ask every company for references and a written contract, whatever its label.
- Give more weight to Verified facts than to Claimed or Unclaimed ones.
- Our guides to choosing a medical billing company and contract terms list the questions to ask.
What This Means for Companies
- Claiming your listing is free. You can update your details, add your website link and get your badge from your dashboard.
- If anything on your profile is wrong, tell us at info@practicevendors.com and we will correct it.
- The best way to earn a practice’s trust here is the same as anywhere else: accurate information, clear pricing and real references.
