Claim edit: Social Security Number with an unassigned area number

Stedi now rejects 837P professional, 837D dental, and 837I institutional claims that contain a Social Security Number (SSN) with an unassigned area number.

How the edit works

A claim can include a Social Security Number (SSN) for the billing provider, subscriber, patient, or other subscriber.

The first three digits of an SSN are the area number. The Social Security Administration (SSA) never issues an SSN whose area number is 000, 666, or in the 900-999 range, which is reserved for IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs).

An SSN with one of these area numbers can't be valid, so it won't match any record at the payer. If a claim includes an SSN with an unassigned area number, the payer may reject the claim.

This edit catches the issue before the claim reaches the payer. It prevents payer rejections, which take longer to resolve and delay payment for the provider.

Rejection errors

If you submit a claim using Stedi's Claim Submission API endpoints and the claim fails the edit, you'll get back an error response in real time. The response includes details in the errors array:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "code": "33",
      "description": "Invalid Social Security Number (SSN). The submitted SSN for Subscriber, 900123456, has an unassigned area number. The first 3 digits cannot be 000, 666, or in the 900-999 range. Correct and resubmit.",
      "followupAction": "Please Correct and Resubmit"
    }
  ]
}

If you submit a claim using SFTP and the claim fails the edit, Stedi will reject the claim with a 277CA claim acknowledgment. The acknowledgment will include a related claim status category code, claim status code, entity identifier code, and error message:

STC*A7>148>HK*[DATE]*U*[AMOUNT]********Invalid Social Security Number (SSN). The submitted SSN for Subscriber, 900123456, has an unassigned area number. The first 3 digits cannot be 000, 666, or in the 900-999 range. Correct and resubmit.~