How to switch to Stedi from another healthcare clearinghouse

Moving to a new healthcare clearinghouse can be painful.

During a migration, you have to juggle transactions across multiple systems. Enrollments are hard to track, can take months, and the next steps aren’t always clear.

But switching doesn’t have to be hard. At Stedi, we work to make it easy and predictable.

This guide covers what actually changes when you switch clearinghouses, what doesn't, and migration strategies.

If you’re building an EHR, EMR, practice management, or RCM tool on Stedi, you can use this guide to migrate your providers to Stedi without disrupting their billing workflows.

If you’re a provider yourself, it outlines what to do and what to expect during the transition.

What doesn't change

Switching clearinghouses doesn’t change the provider’s existing relationships with their payers.

Most things stay the same, including:

• Payer IDsClearinghouses use payer IDs to route transactions to the right payer. Other clearinghouses make you switch to their payer IDs when you migrate.That means you have to map old payer IDs to new ones – and maintain those mappings – often indefinitely.

  You can keep using your existing payer IDs when you switch to Stedi. We use payer ID aliases to ensure any known ID for the payer works. No manual mapping is needed.
  
  

• CredentialingCredentialing is how a payer checks that a provider is qualified to practice. The process varies by payer, but it usually involves checking the provider’s education, licenses, and work history.Healthcare clearinghouses don’t handle credentialing. And changing your clearinghouse won’t affect your credentialing status with a payer.
  
  

• Payer contractsTo accept a commercial payer’s insurance, providers have to sign an agreement with the payer, often called the payer contract.Payer contracts outline how much a provider may be paid for services. They’re often required to process transactions with the payer.

  Healthcare clearinghouses aren’t involved in payer contracts. Changing your clearinghouse won’t affect them.
  
  

• Payer portalsPayer portals are websites run by payers. Portal access and credentials are tied to the provider, not their clearinghouse.
  
  

• Claim historyIf you switch clearinghouses, your past claims and remittances remain on file with the payer. In-flight claims are also unaffected.
  
  

• Real-time claim status checksYou can use Stedi’s real-time claim status checks to check the status of any claim – even if the claim was originally submitted through a different clearinghouse. There's no restriction on which clearinghouse you use.

What does change: transaction enrollment

Transaction enrollment registers a provider to send or receive a specific transaction type with a payer.For most transactions – like eligibility checks and claims – enrollment requirements vary by payer. For example, few commercial payers require enrollment for eligibility checks. The steps to complete transaction enrollment also vary by payer.

Providers can use multiple clearinghouses for most transactions at the same time, but ERAs are different.

ERA enrollment

All payers require transaction enrollment to receive Electronic Remittance Advice (ERAs). A provider can only be enrolled to receive ERAs from a payer through one clearinghouse at a time.

When you enroll a provider to receive ERAs for a payer through Stedi, that payer’s ERAs stop going to the old clearinghouse and begin flowing through Stedi.

How transaction enrollment works at Stedi

Transaction enrollment – especially for ERAs – is often manual and time-consuming. Other clearinghouses don’t help you.

Stedi offers fully managed, API-based transaction enrollment for free. You get:

• Transaction Enrollment APISubmit and track enrollment requests programmatically. Developers can automate the enrollment workflow end-to-end.
  
  

• Bulk CSV importSubmit one-off enrollment requests or bulk enrollment CSVs using the Stedi portal.
  
  

• One-click enrollmentFor many payers, you only need to submit an enrollment request. There are no extra forms or follow-up.
  
  

• We do the paperwork.When possible, Stedi fills out forms and signs enrollment PDFs for you. It eliminates over 90% of enrollment paperwork for most teams.

You only take action when necessary, and we surface enrollment tasks through the API or Stedi portal. You can use our Transaction Enrollments Hub to see what steps each payer requires before submitting a request.

To read more, check out our Transaction Enrollment docs.

Timelines for switching ERA enrollments

ERA enrollment timelines vary by payer. You can view timeframes for each in the Payers API or the Stedi Payer Network.

Once an enrollment is done – indicated by the LIVE enrollment status – ERAs for that payer stop going to the provider’s old clearinghouse and start coming to Stedi.

You can use webhooks to get notified when a new ERA arrives at Stedi. Then retrieve them using our ERA API or SFTP. You can also track and view ERAs in the Stedi portal.

Managing the ERA “split” period

Because enrollment timelines vary by payer, ERAs are often split across clearinghouses during a migration.

If you submit Stedi enrollment requests for all of a provider’s payers at once, some ERAs will go to Stedi while ERAs for other payers still go to the old clearinghouse. That’s expected.

To avoid confusion, use the List Enrollments API or the Stedi portal to track enrollment statuses in Stedi. If an ERA enrollment request has a LIVE status, Stedi will get ERAs for that payer.

Migration strategies

We've helped teams migrate thousands of providers to Stedi.Below are common approaches, but we support any permutation – reach out and we'll help you find what works for you.

A. One provider at a time: claims and eligibility checks first, ERAs last

Start by sending claims and eligibility checks through Stedi while keeping ERA and other enrollments at the old clearinghouse.

Because claims and eligibility checks don’t have the single-clearinghouse restriction, you can test Stedi and your old clearinghouse head-to-head at the same time.

Once you’re comfortable, begin moving ERA enrollments over to Stedi.

This is the lowest-risk approach and a good starting point for most teams. However, it also has one of the longest migration timelines.

B. One provider at a time: all transactions at once

Move all transactions – eligibility checks, claims, real-time claim status checks, and ERA enrollments – for a single provider over to Stedi at the same time.

This shortens the migration timeline but requires managing the ERA split period from day one.

C. One payer at a time across all providers

Move ERA enrollments for one payer across all providers at once.

This is less common, but it can be useful if you’re having issues with a specific payer at your old clearinghouse.

Next steps

We’ve helped hundreds of teams run clearinghouse migrations – in production and at scale.

If you're getting ready, reach out. We can help you create a migration plan that fits your needs.

Once you start, our support team will be there to help at each step.