A vendor-run demo is a performance. The data is clean, the workflows are rehearsed, and every click lands on a screen built to impress. None of that is dishonest, but none of it tells you how the system will handle a Tuesday afternoon at your facility: the group with one client who needs an individualized note, the pre-licensed clinician billing under a supervisor, the form your program needs that nobody else uses.
The fix is to stop watching the vendor's demo and start running yours. Below are the ten questions that separate vendors fastest, followed by the six scenarios to make every vendor perform live. Ask each vendor the same set, in the same order, so the answers are comparable.
The 10 questions
1. Who configures workflow changes after go-live, and what is the turnaround?
The honest answers vary from "you do, same day, in a form builder" to "submit a ticket." Both can work. What you are listening for is specificity, because a vendor who cannot answer this has not thought about your life after the contract is signed.
2. What happens to a claim when documentation is incomplete?
The best systems hold the claim and show what is missing. The worst submit it and let the payer tell you. This one question reveals whether billing and documentation are actually connected or just sold together.
3. Which levels of care does your current customer base actually run?
A platform can list every level of care on its website and still have a customer base concentrated in one. Ask for references at your level of care and your organization size.
4. What does your system not do well?
A vendor with no answer has not been honest yet. Every platform has weak spots, and a vendor who can name theirs is telling you what the first support ticket will be about.
5. How do you support confidentiality requirements for substance use disorder records?
Ask them to show it, not describe it. Consent and disclosure workflows are demonstrable features; a paragraph about federal regulations is not.
6. If a feature we need does not exist, will you scope it, commit a delivery date, and put it in the contract?
Verbal roadmap promises are hopes. Dated commitments in the contract are deliverables.
7. How many active implementations will my implementation manager be carrying?
The single best diligence question we have heard a buyer ask. A specific number tells you whether your go-live has an owner or a queue position.
8. What is the training model, and which parts are included?
Train-the-trainer, by department, or on-site. Each is legitimate. Unquoted training is a change order waiting to happen.
9. Who runs the billing cutover, and when does that track start?
Clearinghouse setup and payer enrollment are frequently the longest lead items in the whole project. A vendor who sequences them after clinical configuration is quietly extending your timeline.
10. What is the full pricing stack, in writing?
Seat definitions including interns and PRN staff, onboarding scope, per-transaction fees, AI pricing, and renewal terms. Every one of these in writing before the proposal stage.
The 6 scenarios to run live
Questions get answers. Scenarios get evidence. Bring these and make every vendor perform them with data that looks like yours:
- Document a real group session from your program, including one client who needs an individualized note. Count the steps.
- Build or modify a form without vendor help, live, in the demo.
- Follow one service from schedule to encounter to claim, and ask what stops an incomplete chart from becoming a submitted claim.
- Run your rendering provider scenario: a pre-licensed clinician delivering a service billed under a supervisor, with a payer that credentials differently.
- Schedule an eligibility check to run automatically before an upcoming appointment, and ask whether it verifies secondary coverage as well as primary.
- If AI documentation is offered, ask where the clinician reviews and approves output before it enters the record, and what happens to your data during processing.
A vendor who handles all six with your scenarios has earned the next meeting. A vendor who keeps steering back to their script has answered a different question.
How to run the process
Three mechanics make the answers usable:
Same set, every vendor. Comparability is the whole point. A spreadsheet with ten rows and one column per vendor turns demo impressions into a decision.
Your data, not theirs. Send your scenarios ahead of the demo. A vendor who prepares them is showing you what implementation will feel like.
