Benefits verification establishes how a plan covers a service and whether authorization is required. Prior authorization is the process of obtaining the payer's approval before the service is delivered. Verification is a lookup; authorization is a request. One tells you the rule; the other satisfies it. Both need to happen before the visit for services that require approval.
They are often bundled in practice because the same staff do both and the same inputs feed both. But they fail differently. A missed verification produces a surprise bill; a missed authorization produces a denial that is often unappealable. Knowing the requirement upfront, which is a verification task, is what prevents the second failure.
