When the vendor's webhooks skip steps
At my last company, we used prior authorizations through our prescribing vendor, and for a while we couldn't trust the status updates.
When we submitted a prior authorization, we expected a sequence of events: requested, pending, then approved or denied. We didn't get that. A submission would go straight to "action required." Sometimes it jumped to closed or canceled with no approval or denial in between. Whole steps were missing.
How we confirmed it was them
We stored every webhook payload we received in our own database. We also had the vendor's own interface, so we could compare the two. Their UI showed one status. Our records showed the events never arrived. A payload dump during testing confirmed it. The events weren't late or malformed. They didn't exist.
We opened a support ticket. At first, the vendor didn't know it was happening. After a couple of weeks they told us it would become a new feature, with a launch estimate of about two months. As far as I know, it hasn't shipped.
What it cost
Volume was small, two or three prior authorizations a week. But when one got stuck, a support person or care coordinator had to open the vendor's embedded window and dig through several pages to see what was needed. That took about an hour each time. Worse, after they submitted what was asked, we still got no "requested" or "pending" event, so our workflow never restarted. Patients sometimes waited over a week for results. Insurers are slow on their own, but not knowing where a request stood made it harder to help anyone.
What I'd do on day one
- Get the full list of events in writing. When we asked what webhooks would be sent, we were pointed to documentation with two examples and no complete list. Ask for every event and status, and ask which transitions are guaranteed to fire.
- Store every raw payload. It's the only way to prove what you did and didn't receive.
- Don't let webhooks be your only source of truth. Have something running that checks status on its own schedule, so a missing event slows you down instead of stopping the workflow.
Webhooks are a good way to get updates fast. They're a poor foundation if you can't tell when one never arrives.