Affiliate Network Sites
A program of Veterans Discseel Network
A service line for the veterans you already have
Open a procedure to your existing census that you cannot offer today, because there is no authorization pathway behind it. VDN supplies that pathway.
Affiliate Network Sites
A service line you want to offer, for the patients you already have.
You have veterans in your practice who are candidates for this procedure. You cannot offer it to them, because there is no authorization pathway behind it and no route to get the case paid. That is the only thing standing between your census and a new service line.
The problem worth solving
The patients are already yours. The service line isn't available to them.
If you treat this population, you already know the pattern.
Where it breaks today
A veteran in your practice presents with chronic disc-related back pain — often years of it, often after a fusion that did not help. The case is clinically appropriate. Your suite is ready. And there is no way to move forward, because there is no authorization pathway behind the procedure and no route to get it paid.
So the conversation ends where it started, and the veteran goes back to managing pain inside a practice that could have treated them.
What the network changes
VDN holds the payer relationship and operates the authorization pathway, together with the intake, records collection, authorization tracking, scheduling support, billing, and long-term follow-up behind it. That is the piece a single practice cannot practically build, and it is what makes the service line available to your census.
You keep your physician, your suite, and your patients. Nothing about your practice moves to the network.
Be clear about what this is not
VDN does not route patients to affiliate sites, and joining the network is not a source of patient flow. The service line is for the veterans already in your practice, and building your census remains your own work and your own expense. Eligibility for care in the community is determined by VA — the network provides the pathway, not a guarantee that any particular veteran will be authorized.
The arrangement in one line
Your practice brings everything clinical. VDN brings the pathway and the infrastructure.
This is a network affiliation, not a partnership and not a joint venture. Your practice stays your practice — the network attaches an authorization pathway and a back office to it.
What the affiliate provides
- • A treating physician trained in the procedure and credentialed to VDN protocol — or, where the practice has none, VDN will provide one
- • A procedure suite licensed to your state’s standard for the setting
- • Source documentation of that conformity, before the first case and kept current
- • Dedicated procedure days for network cases
- • Clinical support staff, credentialed as your state requires for the setting
- • Procedure kits produced to VDN specification
- • Your own patient census and the work of building it
What VDN provides
- • The payer relationship and the authorization pathway
- • Authorization tracking through to the procedure
- • Clinical protocol, candidacy criteria, and documentation standard
- • Centralized patient intake, records collection, and coordination
- • Complete administrative and billing infrastructure
- • Outcome registry and long-term patient follow-up
- • A trained treating physician, where the practice does not have one
- • Network brand, affiliate designation, and use of network marks under license
Read this before you go further
Two things that stay with you
Most network models get pitched as though the network hands you patients and takes over your practice. This one does neither, and the arrangement only works if that is clear from the first conversation.
The clinical work is yours
Your physician evaluates the patient, determines candidacy, and performs the procedure. Where your practice does not have a physician trained in the procedure, VDN will provide one. VDN sets the protocol, kit specification, documentation standard, and follow-up intervals as conditions of network participation — but the candidacy determination is the treating physician’s alone, and the network does not override clinical judgment.
The facility standard is your state’s
The applicable facility standard is the standard set by the state in which the site operates, for the setting in which the procedure is performed. VDN does not set facility standards and does not substitute its judgment for state requirements. You carry the burden of proof and provide the documentation; VDN receives and verifies it rather than inspecting and approving.
State governs the room. VDN governs the medicine. You practice it.
What you are not building
The capability you skip
The affiliate model exists so a practice can open this service line to its own census without standing up the parts that take years and specialist hires to build.
Payer contracting
You do not negotiate or hold the payer relationship. VDN does.
Authorization pathway
The pathway itself, plus authorization tracking through to the procedure.
Intake and records
Centralized intake, records and imaging collection, patient coordination.
Revenue cycle
Claim submission, denials and appeals, collections, and reporting.
Next steps