anonymous wrote on Thursday, April 01, 2010:
Has anyone had any success in uploading ERA files in v.3.2.0? I am using it on CentOS 5.4 64x with Apache 2.2, and PHP 5.2.
I clicked on browse to select the ERA file, then clicked on search. It pulls up invoices with no errors, but there is no ‘PROCESS ERA File’ button. Anyone else experiencing this on v.3.2.0?
anonymous wrote on Wednesday, April 28, 2010:
I adjusted the deliminators as suggested in a previous posting and still no luck… not even an error. This is happening with Availity ERA files… has anyone had any success parsing ERA files on v3.2?
rdhingra wrote on Wednesday, June 30, 2010:
Hello,
Did you have any luck with uploading Availity ERA files. I am having the same problem. No Process Button.
Please help
Rema Dhingra
aethelwulffe wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
Reviving an old thread here:
No. No luck. I have been trying to upload an Availity ERA (sent from Magellan) all morning. It does not go through at all. I have looked in the ERA /EDI folders and the upload just isn’t happening. I have also tried different extensions and the like. In a search here, I saw that someone mentioned changing the file delimiters, but I can’t find where the recommended changes were posted, and it was reported that the changes had no effect. I am wondering if something else is simply preventing the file from being uploaded.
I had a bunch of projects planned for today, but I must now resolve this. In anticipation of getting the clinic out of the Old Stone Age, we are now receiving all our ERA’s though Availity.
Some time in the first quarter, I posted some ERA’s that didn’t even have associated claims in the EMR just to test. Those files worked, and are still there, complete with the generated HTML report. I believe those ERA’s might have been uploaded before the conversion to 3.2.0.
Unless someone has found the source of this issue and can grace me with knowledge, I guess I need to test the old ERA’s for uploadability, and then check structure differences, then find whatever code processes the files….
To date, every time I get going on something in the billing module, I hit a show-stopper like this. ARRRRGGGHHHH!
–No Button Woes extended dance mix—
sunsetsystems wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
I don’t know offhand what your Availity problem is, but it sounds like they are doing something differently. In any case don’t expect a seamless experience with ERA processing… in my experience payers make data entry errors or do other things that cannot be automatically handled, so it is very important to carefully monitor the reports that come from ERA parsing and do manual corrections as needed.
aethelwulffe wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
Problem SOLVED
Open your Availity file in NOTEPAD.exe
You will see a bunch of squares at the end of lines. Copy one, then use Edit/Replace and replace them with nothing. (deletes them all).
Now SAVE the file, making sure you don’t have other versions that will cause you issues.
Now you can upload the file with success.
To prevent this problem in the future, log onto availity and go to your EDI reporting preferences and uncheck the box as in the following illustration:
aethelwulffe wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
I understand your sentiments Rod, but let’s face it: Most “Billers” in the work place can’t tell you anything about the structure of an ERA, and a simple troubleshooting item like this is beyond them. Normally, yes, people gotta get in there and grunt through if they want something, but Availity is a special case. Availity is FREE in Florida. I have great interest that it works with OpenEMR smoothly. I am thinking that an FAQ for using Availtiy with OpenEMR might be helpful to a lot of people. I’ve been documenting the whole process of getting on availity, linking other providers (what agreement to send where) etc… As I stumble through as a billing N00b, my notes might forge into a very comprehensive guide. Why? 'Cause I have a special superpower that seems to let me hit every snag in the road, make every bad choice, and be duped by every inconsistent bit of information. A good guide title would be “Availity by Dummy”.
tmccormi wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
I’ve been using Availity quite successfully for a while now, and FAQ would be good in general. I have developed some perl scripts I use to automatically downlowd (via sFTP) and post response files from them (including ERA). if you are interested …. 
-Tony
sunsetsystems wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
Yes that kind of documentation would be excellent!
Tony could your scripts go into the repository?
tmccormi wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
I haven’t tested them with 4.0 yet and they require a new table, and ‘view’ and mods to the billing process app to read, display and manage reported / parsed errors. I don’t mind sharing them in the contribs as an example, but I would like to figure out how to integrate it more smoothly, just have not had the time lately.
-Tony
aethelwulffe wrote on Wednesday, December 15, 2010:
I would MUCH rather have a nice smoothly running solid script to try out myself….vs the rickety tweaky kind I usually output! You know, even if your contrib is not exactly super well integrated, if the documentation in and out of the code is really solid, most people can get good use out of it.
Tony, I only have a vague idea of what you are talking about, but if it is a script to upload to availity directly without logging on and uploading, then I will learn dude! Our password is a B!#ch!
-Art
anonymous wrote on Monday, January 10, 2011:
Has anyone come up with a solution to stop processing duplicate ERA’s? We get a ERA with multiple payments and sometimes they have already been processed, any one encounter this problem before?
Regards,
Chris
http://www.ehrlive,com
kevmccor wrote on Monday, February 14, 2011:
“Availity by Dummy” - What a great idea! Please. I am trying to get my brain around handling the EDI and x12 issues. We use Availity and have been fairly successful in submitting claims, but I am really having a time figuring out how to deal with keeping track of responses. I am having to go through each response and figure out what happened. I just don’t know how to get the response data into our system or what would happen if I did.
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, February 15, 2011:
Are you having trouble getting the ERA’s to load?
kevmccor wrote on Tuesday, February 15, 2011:
I am a seasoned noobie, becoming familiar with OpenEMR. In my opinion, there is nothing obvious about billing and I am still worried about accidentally ruining something. I did not know the ERA’s could be uploaded, much less how to do it.
kevmccor wrote on Wednesday, February 16, 2011:
I see that in the Fees|Billing screen there is a link to EOB file which opens a new tab giving the option of uploading an ERA file. So, which ones are those .ebr, .ebt. .ibr .997 .99T ? and how does that screen work?
Thanks
kevmccor wrote on Tuesday, March 01, 2011:
Now I have some experience with the EOB and ERA screens. I tried to upload one x12_835 file and my experience was that it did not process correctly. I did the EOB statement and invoicing by manual input and that seems to work well, once one sees what to do. In my opinion, the process would be improved by displaying part of the invoice text with a choice to “commit” the update or “cancel” and return to the beginning. Which scripts actually try and process the ERA or 835 files?
juggernautsei wrote on Friday, April 15, 2011:
Hi,
We are using 3.2 on a windows server 2003 xxamp install and we have an ERA (electronic remittance advice) that we uploaded into the OpenEMR EOB section. We uploaded the ERA report without any errors and we received the list of the corresponding X12 files; however, when we selected an invoice for a patient and entered the EOB detailed page, we didn’t see the “Process ERA file button” at the bottom of the page as the Help instructions stated there would be. Additionally, the EOB detail page failed to populate with the: Check/EOB# ,Check/EOB date, Pay, Adjustment
(no data from the 835 file populated into these appropriate fields. This should be automatically populated).
Any hints or suggestions from Rod, Tony or Chris would be great.
Sherwin
openmedpractice.com
malik8515 wrote on Tuesday, March 13, 2012:
Any progress on this. Kevin did you figure out how to deal with availity response files?
kevmccor wrote on Tuesday, March 13, 2012:
Yes, I have figured out how to deal with Availity files. In fact, I can tell you more than you ever want to know. I looked at my previous comments, made months ago, and I had to laugh. Those comments were from a real beginner. For the not so technical, here it is:
1. Upload batch file
2. Download .97T, .ibt, .ebt files and look at them - rejects are described here
3. (Also download the .999 (with TA1) and .277xxx files, but they are x12 format - segments, codes, etc.)
3. Download .era 835 files and use the Fees | Payments screen
I recommend keeping a brief diary in a notebook. Always download to specific directories and set your file explorer to sort by date, so the most recently downloaded files are in order. I don’t know any other way to keep track of what has been done.
I have written php scripts to do a lot of this and I am working on how to possibly integrate them in OpenEMR. The issues I am thinking on now are 1) files are in user directory - OpenEMR is on server. There must be an upload/validate process and a good storage scheme. 2) How much, if any, interaction with OpenEMR database is desirable. Right now, my scripts require the user to have their own web server, not too difficult on linux, a pretty fair knowledge of how to get things to work, and time to play.