What is ERA (Electronic Remittance Advice)?
The electronic form of a remittance advice — in United States healthcare, an ERA is delivered as an EDI 835 file.
Definition
ERA is the functional name for what the 835 is technically. When a clearinghouse, EHR, or payer portal offers to send you "ERAs", the artefact you receive is an EDI 835 file. The terms are used interchangeably in practice, with ERA describing the business document and 835 describing the transaction standard that carries it.
ERAs replace paper remittances and enable automatic payment posting: because the file is structured, a system can match each claim payment to the original claim, post the payment, apply the contractual adjustment, and route the patient balance without a human re-keying anything.
ERA enrolment is per payer and is separate from claim submission enrolment. A practice can be submitting claims electronically to a payer while still receiving that payer’s remittances on paper — which is a common and easily missed gap.
Why it matters
Every payer not enrolled for ERA is a payer whose denials are invisible to your reporting until someone reads a paper remittance by hand.
Related terms
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