Commercial Carriers. This tab contains all the Commercial carriers with their corresponding NAIC Co-Code. For Carriers we will be using the 5 position numeric Co-code assigned to them by the NAIC. If Carriers need more than one Payer ID, we will assign them as many additional 5 position alphanumeric Payer IDs as they need.

Self-Insured. This tab contains all the "certified self-insured" and the "self-insured government entities" and any other entity that needs to be enumerated with a Payer ID and in this case their Payer ID is one letter followed by four digits. we are starting with the letter A and once we reach 10,000 of these we will switch to the letter B and so on. This first list looks nice because it was alphabetized before enumeration, but as new entities get added to the list they will receive the next sequential number and therefore the numbering will start to appear more random in the future. The important point to remember is that these Payer ID assignments are permanent and the numbers will not be re-used. For instance, if a self-insured company decides to buy insurance from a Commercial Carrier, their old assignment as self-insured will not be deleted. Among other things, this allows for the handling of runoff business. If a self-insured needs more than one Payer ID, we will assign them as many additional 5 position alphanumeric Payer IDs as they need.

TPAs. This tab contains TPAs, Bill Review companies and other claims administrators and bill adjudication companies. Most of the time these are the ones that will be identified on the 837 by their Payer ID. The provider will put the TPA's Payer ID on the 837 eBill and send it to the TPA for payment. However, there are other arrangements possible. I have tried to address some of these in the FAQ. These Payer IDs have been assigned as two letters followed by three digits, as in TPxxx. In the future the two letters will have other sets of two letters, maybe TQxxx or TRxxx or something else, depending on how many TPAs request Payer IDs in this range. If TPAs need more than one Payer ID, we will assign them as many additional 5 position alphanumeric Payer IDs as they need.

Clearinghouses. The clearinghouses do not get Payer IDs, as they do not process the bills for adjudication but simply pass the bills on to the proper Payer IDs. In general the clearinghouses are identified in the ISA of the X12 envelope as the "receiver" of the X12. The most common convention today is to use the FEIN to identify the sender and the receiver, but there are a number of other sorts of sender and receiver identification mechanisms established by agreement among trading partners. So, the next task is to update the clearinghouse tab with the FEIN of all the clearinghouses so the FEIN can be used on the ISA envelope.