Glossary

This section includes description for the glossary of terms.

ACN

Attachment Control Number.

Active Coverage

This indicates that the service is covered additional details would need to be obtained from the details.

AD

Admitting.

Additional Payer

This indicates that another payer may provide additional coverage for this member. In the sandbox, this is provided for reference of what the field would look like in a response.

Alternative Payer Name

The Alternative Payer Name is typically another name the payer may have had or another name they may be known as.

ANSI

American National Standards Institute.

API

Optum APIs for the next generation of healthcare applications!

  • Medical Network Eligibility V3 API: Provides complete patient profile and benefits information to support for delivering healthcare with more efficient and accurate reimbursement.
  • Professional Claims API and the Institutional Claims API:
    • Allow healthcare providers and institutions to submit healthcare claims for a service or encounter.
  • Claims Status API: Used by the submitter of a medical claim to determine the status of any previously submitted Institutional or Professional claim.

Benefit Amount

This is Patient's responsibility. The meaning of this value depends on the `benefitsInformation`.

Benefits Description

A written determination that an applicant is eligible for healthcare aid or subsistence aid or both.

BI

Billing

Benefits Information Codes

This code is used to identify the eligibility or benefit information. This may be the eligibility status of the individual or the benefit related category. A list of the codes are: A, B, C, G, J, or Y

  • A – Co-Insurance
  • B – Co-Payment
  • C – Deductible
  • G – Out of Pocket (Stop Loss)
  • J – Cost Containment
  • Y – Spend Down
These are the primary factors that should be considered. Additionally, verification of the services are being rendered by an in-network or out-of-network physician can affect the customer's responsibility.

Bundled Cost

A bundled cost is the price that a provider charges for a given service.

CCN

Claim Control Number.

CI

Commercial Insurance.

Claim Status

Checks the status of a claim in the payer’s system. If a provider has not received a payer report on a claim, or if they have not received payment, they run a claim status request to find out the most recent status of that claim. Supports Professional and Institutional claims.

ClaimInformation

A key block of medical coding information that defines the actual procedures and services rendered for the medical encounter. It contains other JSON blocks including the serviceLines objects that contain the professionalService line item charges and diagnosis information.

ClaimReference

Contains important values, such as the payerId, customerClaimNumber, the claimType, and other values that mostly will be managed programmatically.

ClaimResponses and Reports

A fetching tool for claims information from your mailbox. Supports Professional and Institutional claims.

CLIA

Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment.

CMS

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

COB

Coordination of Benefits.

Co-Insurance

Co-insurance represents the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit, and is represented as a percentage in benefitPercent. The co-insurance percentage is typically found in a fee for service environment and is based on a percentage of the total amount the provider would be paid for the service(s). Since the actual amount that would be paid to the provider may not be known until after the claim has been processed, a percentage is used, rather than an actual dollar amount. For example, a patient may have a 20% co-insurance for a physician office visit if the provider is in the plan that the patient belongs to, or patient may have a 40% co-insurance for a physician office visit if the provider is not in the plan that the patient belongs to. The provider may calculate an estimated amount to collect from the patient or may wait until after the claim has been processed to collect the actual amount from the patient (requirements may vary from plan to plan). If the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit is nothing, "0" is to be placed in benefitPercent.

Co-Payment

Co-payment represents the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit and is represented as a dollar amount in benefitAmount. The co-payment amount is typically a fixed amount and is customarily collected upon receipt of service (however the requirements may vary from plan to plan). For example, a patient may have a $10 co-payment for a physician office visit or a $50 co-payment for an Emergency Room visit. If the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit is nothing, "0" is to be placed in benefitAmount.

ConnectCenter (aka Legacy Relay Health (LRH) Payer List

A portal for our customers who are utilizing our Clearance or Assurance solutions. When you log into ConnectCenter it does show all payer lists so that may be what you are looking for. If you are using our APIs for Claims and Eligibility you will want to use the ConnectCenter payer list.

ControlNumber

A single arbitrary value that the requestor (Providers and often Payers, originate) defines in the initial Eligibility API transaction request. All parties to the Eligibility transaction refer to this number to ensure accurate responses and completion of the exchange. The `controlNumber` is a random or auto-generated number that you create and send to us for each transaction. That unique number helps with any troubleshooting and tracking of the transaction when you are 'Live' with us. ControlNumbers must be defined as a 9-digit unsigned numeric value.

CPID

Claim Payer Identification (for claims process only). This unique identifier is setup to process claims with payers. Per the Claim type column, you can identify if it is a Professional CPID or an Institutional CPID. You should use that for submitting the claim, the `tradingPartnerServiceId` field.

CSA

Customer service announcements.

DCN

Document Control Number.

Deductible

Total amount of the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit and is represented as a dollar amount in EB07. The deductible amount is typically found in a fee for service environment and is based on the total amount the patient will have to pay before their benefits begin (which may then require co-insurance or co-payment). If the patient's portion of responsibility for a benefit is nothing, "0" is to be returned. The deductible information would be returned by STC and should be applied based on the services that are rendered, what STC code they would fall under and the time qualifier returned by the payer. If you have separate deductibles for in-network and out-of-network care, the amount you have already paid toward your in-network deductible does not count toward your out-of-network deductible. These would be separate amounts and would not count towards each other.

Dependent

Dependent of the policy holder (information about the insurance policy holder's dependent who received the medical services.

Dependent Coverage

Dependent coverage represents coverage for family members of the policyholder, such as spouses, children, or partners. The response contains benefits information for the individual and for the family. The dependents fall under the family information.

DiagnosisCode

Diagnosis Code, indicates a code from a specific industry code list. See annotation in OpenAPI spec.

DiagnosisTypeCode

Diagnosis Type Code, example: ABK. The listed diagnosis is the patient diagnosis. See annotation in OpenAPI spec.

Diagnosis Code Pointer

The Diagnosis Pointer relates to the reason for which the service was performed. For more information, see.

DMERC

Durable Medical Equipment Regional Carrier Certificate.

DRG

Diagnosis Related Group.

DMG

Demographic information.

DOB

Date-of-Birth.

DOS

Date-of-Service: date of provider service to the subscriber.

EDI

Electronic data interchange.

ERA

Electronic Remittance Advice.

EntityIdentifier Attribute

Describes the information receiver that sent the Eligibility request, in this case, a Provider. They will typically be receiving the patient's insurance information as the response to their request.

EOB

Explanation of Benefits.

Episode

An episode of care includes all the services provided to a patient to treat a clinical condition or procedure. The services included in an episode of care occur within a specific period of time and from a range of organizations that make up an integrated system.

ESRD

End Stage Renal Disease.

EntityType

Will always be either a Person or a Non-Person entity. In this example, the submitting provider's NPI follows.

ETIN

Electronic Transmitter Identification Number.

Family Indicator

The primary indicator of coverage for all dependents unless otherwise specified by the payer. It might also return spouse or child. Additionally, there are some payers in which each individual member would have a unique ID. The “dependents” of the policy would have a unique member ID associated with them that should be sent to the payer.

HCI

Health Care Information.

HCPCS

Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System: defines reference codes for items and services provided in the delivery of healthcare.

HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Healthcheck

The `/healthcheck` endpoint verifies that the operating status of the Optum APIs is optimal and the APIs are running and accessible.

  • status: "OK" for successful health check

ICN

Internal Control Number.

IDCard

The `idCard` is used when the Identity Card Number is different than the Member Identification Number. This is mainly prevalent in the Medicaid environment.

InPlanNetworkIndicator

In the API response, the payer will return a `inplanNetworkIndicator`; the in-network and out-of-network indicators on the transaction only indicate how the benefits should be applied in those specific situations for those service type codes. This can be used with the associated STC in the same object.

InPlanNetworkIndicator Values

  • ’W’: Not Applicable (benefit applies to both In-Network and Out-of-Network providers)
  • 'Y': In-Network (benefit is only for In-Network providers);
  • 'N': Out-of-Network (benefit is only for Out-of-Network providers);
  • ‘U’: Unknown (benefit cannot be used in calculations because it is not known if it is for In-Network or Out-of-Network);

Limitations

This indicates that the Individual in-network Orthodontics benefits are limited to $2000 for the remaining coverage dates.

Member ID

Member ID is the ID present on the insurance ID card. We advise you collect a copy of the member ID card at the time of service to confirm this information.

NAIC

National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

NCCI

National Correct Coding Initiative.

NPI

National Provider ID number for the submitting provider.

NUBC

National Uniform Billing Committee.

Optum Payer List

Optum Payer List (also internally known as Legacy Change, Emdeon, or Ark) is for our Submitters who are given a 9-digit submitter ID, and typically do not utilize APIs to submit their transactions. If you have a 6-digit submitter ID, use the ConnectCenter payer ID. Each of these payer lists represents different products or services that customers can purchase from Optum. There are plans to consolidate all of the payer lists but that will not be available for some time. The payer lists may have some overlap but customers should only use the payer lists for the products/services they are contracted or testing with.

Other Payer

This indicates that another payer may provide additional coverage for this member. In the sandbox, this is provided for reference of what the field would look like in a response.

Out-of-Pocket

(Stop Loss) represents the maximum amount of the patient's portion of responsibility before a benefit is covered with no additional payments from the patient, up to the maximum covered by the health plan. The Out of Pocket (Stop Loss) amount typically represents the combined total amount of deductible and co-insurance payments made by the patient. Some health plans have Out of Pocket (Stop Loss) amount for the individual patient and a higher amount for the entire family.

Pagination

Works with the query parameters size and page. Its maximum size is 1000. Page numbering starts at page 0.

ParStatus

An indication of whether or not a provider agrees to participate in the Medicare program and agrees to always accept the Medicare assignment for services rendered to Medicare beneficiaries.

Payer

Insurance company where the claim is going to.

Payer ID

Unique ID number that is assigned to an insurance company for the purpose of transmitting provider claims electronically. It can be found on the back of the insurance card. If it is not available, you can use the Realtime Payer ID.

PHI

Personal health information.

PMI

Personal medical information.

Policy Number

The policy number is typically the group number.

Procedure Modifier

Required when a modifier clarifies/improves the accuracy of the associated procedure code, the modifier is available and when the information receiver believes that the information source supports this high-level of functionality.

Provider

The provider involved with the medical claim. The `provider` object and its accompanying information describe the information receiver in the EDI standard documentation.

ProviderType

The Claims has the following provider types:

  • “BillingProvider” (Loop 2010AA) – One who gets paid
  • “ReferringProvider” (Loop 2310A) – One who directs the patient for care to the provider rendering the services being reported
  • “RenderingProvider” (Loop 2310B) – One who performs the service
  • “OrderingProvider” (Loop 2420E) – One who requested the services or items being reported on this service line. For example, provider ordering diagnostic tests and medical equipment or supplies
  • “SupervisingProvider” (Loop 2310D) – Required when the rendering provider is supervised by a physician
This information is common across the medical industry and can be found on many crosswalks or sites.

QMB

Qualified medicare beneficiary.

R5 File

Provides payment and denial information from the payer. This report is an explanation of the claim payment sent by the payer and can be translated into JSON.

Realtime Payer ID

Used by Eligibility or Claim status.

ReassociationKey

A tracking number associated with the eligibility transaction so that we can look up the transaction being sent.

Receiver

Payer.

Required

The Required field indicates mandatory information.

Revenue Performance Advisor Payer List

Revenue Performance Advisor (known internally as RPA or Capario) Payer List is another product that has a specific payer list for users of that product. This is a payer list for customers who are sending attachments through Optum. These customers use an 8-digit submitter number.

Rural FQHC

Rural Health Clinics and Federally Qualified Health Centers.

SBC

Summary of benefits and coverage.

ServiceLines and ServiceDate

ServiceLines is an array of one or more medical services, procedures, or products for the encounter each of which, is specified as a serviceDate record in the array.

ServiceTypeCode

`ServiceTypeCode` is used to identify business groupings for healthcare services and benefits. Include the `serviceTypeCode` in the API request body, and then submit to payers on an eligibility and benefit inquiry transaction to get the patient’s eligibility and benefit details. The `serviceTypeCode` consists of `value` and `valueType`. Here is a complete list of service codes. serviceTypeCode '30' is most commonly used and provides general benefit information in the response. Depending on your need for specific eligibility information, the service type code might change.

Situational

Specific information may be you can included or omitted depending on the individual encounter.

StatusCode Attributes

Our Attachments Status APIs support a series of standard responses, called [statusCodes](doc:use-the-test-payers-in-the-sandbox-api#statuscode-responses) to show various results from submitted attachment transactions. For more information, see What do statusCode attributes mean?

SubmitterTransactionIdentifier

Used by Optum support team for troubleshooting purpose.

Subscriber

Medical insurance policy holder; includes the patient's insurance member ID and insurance policyNumber. The `subscriber` object is required when the subscriber is the patient.

SDK

A Software Dev Kit lets developers test applications before deploying on the production server.

Submitter

Provider submitting the claim; identification of the provider, including information, such as the organizationName.

Submitter ID

The submitter is your account number with Optum used to identify transactions routing to and from specific customers. A submitter ID is assigned to any entity submitting healthcare transactions to a payer. The submitter ID is one of the IDs used to identify transactions routing to and from specific customers. The submitter ID is an internal ID used by Optum. If your child accounts are submitting healthcare transactions to a payer OR if you want to keep those sub-accounts separate, they would each get their own submitter ID too.

Time Qualifier Code/Time Qualifier

The `timeQualifierCode` qualifies the time period for coverage. The `timeQualifier` is the actual value. Refer to Time Qualifier Reference.

Token

A hashed alphanumeric representation of sensitive data, such as a authorization token.

TraceID

A unique 128-bit UUID value (as an example, `3ba21288-3f65-11eb-a512-6ab12069ade5`) that Optum returns to the submitter as an acknowledgement when they receive every new attachments transaction. A traceId can also be retrieved by calling the metadata endpoint.

TradingPartner

Represents one or more file owners and payers.

TradingPartnersServiceID

The Payer ID (a number you will find on your insurance card). This is required to request benefit information from an insurance carrier. This will vary based on the payer you want to connect to. Here is a list of test Trading Partner Service IDs (either the CPID for claim submissions or the Real-Time Payer ID for eligibility transactions). For more information, see What is tradingPartnerServiceId.

TrackingNumber

The `trackingNumber` field is a tracking value that you can use at your discretion. It will accept any value and is not required. It exists so that you can link the 277 response back to your original request, and the payer will always echo this value back exactly as you sent it.

UMO

Utilization Management Organization.

VCI

Vaccination Credential Initiative, a cross-industry consortium that includes Optum.

X3 File

Returns the solicited claim status x12 raw data that matches exactly what is returned by the payer and can be translated into JSON. This file is received from payers when claim status is requested and not returned in real time.

For an alphabetical list of topics, see Quick Reference