• What is FreeClaims.com?
• Do you send every claim directly to individual payors?
• What are your hours of operation?
• What makes FreeClaims.com a better clearinghouse solution?
• Who can receive claims electronically?
• Can you do paper claims?
• Can you do statements too?
• How do I send you the claims?
• What formats do you take?
• What if my software cannot output NSF format?
• How do you handle payors that required NetworkId?
• How do you know where to send the claim in the image format?
• What kind of reports does FreeClaims.com produce?
• Do you take encounters?
• What about Medicare, Medicaid claims: do you do them?
• I'm a billing service working out of the home. What can I use to format my electronic claims? Can I enter claims directly on-line?
• I work closely with my PMS vendor and they said that it's no a problems to match up Clearinghouse respond to claims in my PMS system if we received a "machine readable" file. Can you give me "machine readable" report instead?
• We are a small IPA representing several hundred providers. We negotiate reimbursement rates with different payors on behalf of our providers. Our providers submit claims directly to payor for payment. We also request that our providers submit a copy of the HCFA to our IPA so that we can have the data for further study. How can FreeClaims.com help us?
• In addition to claims we send to payor for payment, we often send a certain same claims to our IPA for statistical purposes as required by our IPA agreement, can FreeClaims send one copy to payors for payment and a carbon copy to the IPA?
• Do you have a video demo of FreeClaims?

• When I'm using Internet Explorer and I click 'Member Login', I get the following message: 'The page cannot be displayed'. What can I do to resolve this problem?

What is FreeClaims.com? 

FreeClaims.com is a web site operated by AnviCare Inc. Functionally, it is a clearinghouse for submitting health care claims electronically over the Internet.

While other clearinghouses charge per month or per claim, FreeClaims.com processes free medical claims (HCFA-1500) to payors that can accept claims electronically. For Payors that cannot accept claims electronically, FreeClaims.com charges a nominal postage and handling fee to send claims to these payors via U.S. mail.

While there are literally hundreds of claims clearinghouses operating in the U.S. today, only a few are free. Others charge anywhere from a monthly flat rate to as high as $0.75 per claim!

No. We use major clearinghouses such as Envoy-NEIC and THIN (Texas Health Information Network). If you are using a clearinghouse at this time, it is likely that your clearinghouse also sends claims to the NEIC. FreeClaims.com functions as an intermediate level clearinghouse, allowing us to concentrate on serving the providers directly.

Freeclaims.com is open 24 hours a day! You can login, upload your claim file to us, download your report from our web site and view your batches and claims within those batches on-line. When we need to take our system down for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, you will still be able to do everything except view your batches and claims. You can still upload and download reports. You can check on our system status under the support option on our web site. This page will let you know of any scheduled or unscheduled down time.

We often see a lack of flexibility in the design of the interface with the clearinghouse. Ours is scaled to handle a wide variety of customer needs.

If you submit a small number of claims, all you need is to receive a confirmation report within minutes of uploading your claim file to FreeClaims.com to see if all claims are accepted. You can then check back with FreeClaims.com the next day to see if these claims are accepted by the payor or the next tier clearinghouse. However, if you are a large billing service submitting hundred of claims daily for many different providers, you may want to use our Premium Service Option . Instead of retrieving a text report (which means someone has to read it), you can click on the claim and all events, messages related to that claim will be displayed.

Our solution provides the billing manager with the right tools to perform the job. First, within seconds of your submission, a text-readable report is available, showing claims accepted for further processing as well as claims that were rejected so that you can correct the errors and resubmit the claims. If you are enrolled in our Premium Service Option, you can correct the errors on-line and resubmit them.

At any point in time, if you need to go back to a claim previously submitted to FreeClaims.com, all you need to do is to log in and get a report of all the outstanding claims that either have errors or have not been acknowledged by the down stream party. Again, you can correct the errors if needed and resubmit the claims.

Please refer to our Payor List. This list changes every few weeks.

Yes, for a nominal charge see our price list We can send your paper claims. There are many advantages to sending paper claims electronically via FreeClaims.com. First, it simplifies your billing because all your claims can be sent to the same place. Second, you have a record the claim was sent. How many times have you heard, "We never received your claim," or "We need proof that you sent it" from a payor¹s customer service representative? If your paper claim was sent electronically from FreeClaims.com, you can get the original confirmation report from FreeClaims.com as proof to the payors that you sent your claims.

Yes. You can send FreeClaims.com all your statements via a "print-image" and let us worry about printing, tearing, folding, stamping, and mailing out your statements for you at a very competitive price.

If your Practice Management Software is EDI-ready, all you need to do is build a batch of claims in NSF format, know the name of the data file and where it resides in your system. Next, you would open your Internet browser and go to www.freeclaims. com. Login as a FreeClaims.com user by providing your submitter number, name and password. You will then type in the filename of your claim data file and click on upload to send the data file.

FreeClaims.com can receive HCFA print image or National Standard Format (NSF) or the ANSI 837 Format. If you are currently using another format with another clearinghouse, we may be able to accommodate it. If the volume of claims makes it economically feasible, we can write the conversion free of charge. Otherwise, there may be a nominal one-time Consulting Fee to perform the conversion.

If your Practice Management Software is not EDI ready and cannot produce an NSF claim file, you can still send claims to FreeClaims.com. Most PMS systems can print HCFA claims to a printer. If your PMS can print claims to a printer, you can then set up a "generic text" printer from Windows that prints to a file. Then, select this printer as the "Active" printer when it's time to print claims. This "print image" HCFA file will now be the file that you would upload to FreeClaims.com.

If you are using a DOS PMS, use any print2file utility before printing and just print as normal. Your claims will be routed to a file instead of your printer.

You may also considering at looking at our Claimstronic for Windows PMS. It can output NSF format.

If you cannot provide a NetworkId or GroupNetworkId from your data file, we have a free service where you can have FreeClaims.com automatically insert the correct NetworkId/GroupNetworkId into each claim. All you need to do is set up a substitution rule by providing the Payor Id, Provider Name and TaxId. When a claim from your submitter number comes in and meets the criteria, a substitution automatically occurs.

You can create a subdirectory from root and name it FREECLMS. Then when you need to print to a file, type in c:\freeclms\claims.dat for the filename. After the PMS is finished printing the HCFA forms, you can go to this subdirectory and view this file.

There are basically two kinds of reports. The confirmation (acknowledgement) report is usually generated immediately after a claim file has been uploaded to FreeClaims.com. Claim Status reports are generated the next day when our downstream clearinghouses respond to claims sent to them from FreeClaims.com.

Yes. Encounters are treated like claims. Some payors wish to receive encounters separately, and therefore another payor id is used for encounters. Please refer to our Payor List.

Sending claims to Public Payors may involve registrations and testing which will require additional time and support to accomplish.

AnviCare offers our own Claimstronic for Windows Practice Management Software (PMS). This is a third-generation PMS, following Phymag (Physician Management Software) in the late eighties and Claimstronic in the early nineties. Claimstronic PMS is a windows-based PMS running on Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 2000, and NT. Please click here details.

Yes, if you subscribe to our Premium Service Option. Please contact AnviCare Customer Service to discuss a particular format. We can provide a "flat-file" response and/or an XML data file. If your PMS is EDI ready and each claim submitted has a unique claim ID from your PMS, we can echo the same Id back on the response file.

Typically, what we do is assign a unique extension to the Payor Id. This allows us to know where to forward the claim by reading the Payor Id as well as where to send a copy of the HCFA by reading the Payor Id extension. Please contact Customer Service and we will be glad to help you.

Yes we can. By denoting the payor block with a certain code, in addition of sending the claim to payor for payment, we can send a copy of the same claim to you IPA at the end of the month free of charge. You will never have to worrying about photocopying claims at the end of the month or breeching your contract with the IPA for not complying with their claims collections. It's done automatically at FreeClaims. Best of all, it's free.

Yes, first install the codec by click here. Codec is a video decoder which will tell Windows Media Player how to decode and play the video. This is a one-time setup.

Next, right-click on each of the video segment below and select SAVE TARGET AS from the pop-up menu. We suggest that you save the video file to your desktop. Once the segment is saved, double click on it to play.

Note: It's best to use Microsoft Windows Media Player instead of Real Player or Apple's Quick Time Player. Set your monitor screen size to at least 800 x 600 pixels and play the video in full screen by hit Alt-Enter when the movie has just started.

Video Segments available:

Video No 1 - Login to FreeClaims.com
Video No 2 - Upload your claim file.
Video No 3 - Reconcile claim count and dollar count between your billing software and FreeClaims.com
Video No 4 - Reading the confirmation report on the file you have just uploaded.
Video No 5 - Ensure that claims are loaded correctly to the database.
Video No 6 - Correct Purple claims by match payorid and networkid.
Video No 7 - Correct Red claims by edit the rejected claims.

If you encounter this problem when using Internet Explorer, we recommend you enable a security feature called 'Check for server certificate revocation'. The steps for enabling this option are as follows:

1. open an Internet Explorer browser, if one is not already opened

2. under the menu option called 'Tools', select the final menu item called 'Internet Options...'

3. after the Internet Options panel opens, select the tab labeled 'Advanced'

4. scroll all the way down to the section called 'Security'

5. select the option called 'Check for server certificate revocation (requires restart)'

6. click OK, then close your browser

7. re-open your browser and click 'Member Login' to begin the login process.