This article and payer ID list will help you understand what payer IDs are for mental health insurance billing, how to find the right payer ID for your clients, and how to bill.

What is a Payer ID?

Each insurance company that processes electronic claims will have their own unique payer ID. Beyond this, the same insurance company may have multiple payer IDs as the plans may vary, or they may have one payer ID for multiple plans across multiple states.

Selecting the right payer ID to use when filing your mental health insurance claims is a matter of spending the time inquiring about which payer ID to use. This process is called verifying eligibility and benefits (for behavioral healht) and it is best done before seeing any prospective client that knocks on your door. Check our guide and call script on how to verify eligibility and benefits for mental health clients.

We help our providers find the correct Payer ID for their new clients on a daily basis.  We call up the corresponding insurance company for their plan and verify all the necessary information including the correct payer ID for that client’s plan.  If you want us to do this for you so you can focus on your practice, inquire about our mental health billing service.

By getting the payer ID, you will now know which payer ID to submit to when you send in your claims electronically (via a clearinghouse provider).

Confirm with their customer support which payer ID to use. Then, after they tell you the name of the plan and the corresponding payer ID, it’s time to check against your claims ClearingHouse provider to see what payer ID they have and use. We use OfficeAlly as our clearinghouse partner and we love their service.

What’s a Clearing House?

It’s an organization that acts as a barrier between the millions of insurance claims being submitted to each of these insurance companies and the insurance company itself. They act as a way to screen electronically created claims that come over to each insurance company. A first “test” so to speak.

Many many claims fail this first test. For example, if Aetna requires a “W” before any subscriber ID, the clearinghouse will reject the claim for a bad subscriber ID, and it will never get sent to Aetna. This saves Aetna a ton of time and thus money processing bad, inaccurate, or fraudulent claims. A clearinghouse solves this problem.

Our clearinghouse of choice is OfficeAlly.  To avoid dealing with clearinghouses entirely, consider outsourcing your mental health billing.

Check Against Your ClearingHouse Partner

Of course it wasn’t that simple! Now you have to reference your clearinghouse partner to find out what payer ID they have listed in their database for the plan in question.

Please use the list below or go to OfficeAlly’s website to find their most recent payer ID list: https://cms.officeally.com/Pages/ResourceCenter/PayerLists/PayerList.aspx

The best first step would be to search for the payer ID that you were told on your eligibility and benefits phone call. So use the “Ctrl” + “F” buttons and type in the payer ID. An example is “Value Options” payer ID “VALOP”.

If you cannot match the payer ID with what they quoted to you on the phone, search by the name of the insurance company or plan to find the right payer ID. If you searched for “Value Options” you would find payer ID “VALOP”.

If you do not see the right payer ID, contact OfficeAlly support.

Use Your Payer ID to Bill Mental Health Claims

Now you’re all set to submit claims. Use the correct electronic payer ID from OfficeAlly, confirmed by the insurance company, and submit that through to OfficeAlly via your favorite EHR system. Make sure to add the correct claims address from your eligibility and benefits call as well. Now you’re done!

Don’t want the hassle?

We can help. We do the above process for you daily, included in our mental health billing service. Drop us a line.