With some clearinghouses and payers, you’ll need to import these ERA files manually into MacPractice in order to handle them within MacPractice. This article covers how to manually import an ERA into MacPractice.
Do note that this article will not cover how to acquire ERA files to manually import for all clearinghouses and payers. Each clearinghouse has a different process for how to acquire these. We will cover how to do this with our clearinghouse partners, but other clearinghouses and payers you will need to consult that source’s materials to locate how to find and download the ERA files.
Ensuring ERA Manager is enabled
You’ll need to make sure that you have the ERA Manager enabled on your license. You can check and see if you have the ERA Manager by navigating to the Managers Ability in MacPractice. You should see “ERA Manager” in the sidebar:
Downloading the ERA
Inovalon ERAs
You can locate ERAs from Inovalon in the Remit Payments option under the Collections Tab:
To manually download an ERA via Portal:
Log into Portal and go to Payments and Billing > Find Remittance/EOB/Check. This will bring you to the ERA search page, titled "Manage Remits/EOBsFind Remittance/EOB/Check". Once here, use search criteria, such as the check number, payer name/payer ID, client ID, date range, etc., by which to find the ERA file you are looking for.
Once the search has returned the result you are looking for, click on the office name link that appears on the line of the ERA you want, which will bring up an "ERA Details" page. Here, click on History in the upper left. When the History page comes up, find the "All Files" link at the bottom of the page and click on it. This will download the files to your computer into a zip file. Find the zip file on your computer and open it up.
Note: If downloadable files are not available in the History page for the ERA you are searching for, this means that the files are no longer available and we will need to contact Change Healthcare about getting them reposted.
If the client obtains the ERA files from a different clearinghouse, they will need to provide the files and you will only need to follow the steps below.
To import ERAs into MacPractice:
Locate the .era file and change the file extension from .era to .ARA. If the client obtained the file from a different clearinghouse than Change Healthcare, the file may have a different extension than .era; .835 is a common extension. ERA files from Change Healthcare will have a name that starts with "coerawriter", then a series of characters and dashes.
Once you have changed the extension of the desired file(s), place the renamed file(s) in ~/Library/Application Support/MacPracticeClient/Databases/(database name)/Claim Templates/ .
Once all desired ERA files have been placed in the Claim Templates folder, go to the eClaims ability in the client's MacPractice. Select the Reports node in the sidebar, hold down the Option key on your keyboard, then click the Receive button.
The new file(s) should now be visible in the ERA Manager.