Health Care Payment: Electronic Remit Advice and Standard Paper Remit
Health Care Payment with Electronic Remit Advice (ERA) has a number of advantages over Standard Paper Remit (SPR). The amount payable for each line and/or claim as well as each adjustment applied to a line or claim can be automatically posted to accounting or billing applications from an Electronic Remit Advice, eliminating the time and cost for staff to post this information manually from an Standard Paper Remit. Electronic Remit Advices generally contain more detailed information than the Standard Paper Remit.
All Electronic Remit Advices sent by Medicare contractors are currently in the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12 835 version 5010 format adopted as the national HIPAA Electronic Remit Advice standard.
Medicare provides free software to read the Electronic Remit Advice and print an equivalent of an Standard Paper Remit using the software. Institutional and professional providers can get PC Print and Medicare Easy Print (MREP) respectively from their contractors. These software products enable providers to view and print remittance advice when they’re needed, thus eliminating the need to request or await mail delivery of Standard Paper Remits. The MREP software also enables providers to view, print, and export special reports to Excel and other application programs they may have.