City of LA requires additional zeroes in some of their work comp claim numbers.

Recently, we noticed a high number of bill rejections for the City of LA, even when the claims information matched what the City of LA had on file for the patient.  

We worked with four different companies to sort this problem out; it took way more time and resources than most of you have to spend on a single claims administrator. We burned up the digital lines contacting the City of LA (employer), WCEDI (clearinghouse), Stratacare (Bill Review) and AIMS + Tristar (TPAs), and let’s just say that some of the reps were less than enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

It turns out that the rejections occurred because the City of LA recently started inserting two zeroes into some of their claim numbers. Without the zeroes, City of LA’s clearinghouse is less likely to recognize the claim numbers as correct, and subsequently, rejects the bills.

Please note that this change affects all City of LA claim numbers beginning with 900, including LAPD (9002) and Sworn Fire (9003).

Here are examples of how certain City of LA claim numbers should be formatted from this point forward:

9001-1234-5678 --> 9001-1234-005678

9002-1234-5678 --> 9002-1234-005678

9003-1234-5678 --> 9003-1234-005678

With the additional of the leading 0’s we have encountered far, far fewer rejections for City of LA bills when they are resubmitted with these extra digits in their claim numbers.

To our knowledge, City of LA claims beginning with 400 do not appear to have changed like the 900 claim numbers.