Timely Filing Limits by Payer (2026)

A timely filing limit is the deadline a payer sets for receiving a claim, counted from the date of service: one calendar year for Original Medicare, and whatever the payer's manual, your contract or state law says for everyone else, with separate, usually shorter, clocks for corrected claims and appeals. Miss it and the claim denies with reason code CARC 29, and an in-network provider generally cannot bill the patient for it. Cigna publishes 90 days for participating providers; UnitedHealthcare allows at least 90; Florida Blue cites 180; Aetna's national manual publishes no number at all.

Most pages that rank for this question print a table of numbers with no source, and their numbers disagree with each other. We read each payer's current manual and the regulations on October 23, 2026, and linked every figure to the document it came from. Where a payer's own document publishes nothing, the table says “see your contract” instead of guessing.

Updated 2026-10-23. Reviewed by Jacob Greenberg, ClaimCarePro.

Original Medicare claims must be filed no later than one calendar year after the date of service, under 42 CFR 424.44(a). The Medicare Claims Processing Manual, chapter 1, section 70, spells out the details that trip practices up (CMS, chapter Rev. 13725, April 2026):

• Start date. The “From” date of service. For an institutional claim with span dates, the “Through” date. For a professional claim with span dates, the line item “From” date, and if the From date is late but the To date is not, the contractor splits the line and denies the late part.
• February 29. A date of service on February 29 must be filed by February 28 of the following year.
• End date. The date the Medicare contractor receives a submission that is complete and valid. An incomplete or invalid submission (missing provider name, wrong Medicare number, invalid procedure code) is not a claim.
• No appeal. A denial for untimely filing “does not constitute an initial determination” and is not subject to appeal (§70.4). The provider may not charge the beneficiary beyond the deductible and coinsurance that would have applied.

The only ways past the year are the four exceptions in 42 CFR 424.44(b): administrative error by Medicare or its contractor; retroactive Medicare entitlement; retroactive entitlement where a state Medicaid agency recovered its payment six months or more after the service; and retroactive disenrollment from a Medicare Advantage plan or PACE organization that recovered its payment six months or more after the service. When one applies, the deadline generally extends through the end of the sixth calendar month after the notice or recovery. Medicare Advantage plans are not Original Medicare: their limits come from the plan, as the table shows. For new providers waiting on a PTAN, the year is the hard stop on held claims, see billing before credentialing is complete.

UnitedHealthcare says to submit commercial claims “per the time frame listed in your Agreement or per applicable laws,” and that it allows at least 90 days for participating providers and up to 180 days from the date of service for nonparticipating providers. For Medicare Advantage plans it allows noncontracted providers 365 days from the through date of service, and when it is secondary, at least 90 days from the primary payer's payment, contest, denial or notice (2026 Administrative Guide). The guide also notes timely filing requirements for self-funded plans are set by the self-funded customer together with your contract.

Cigna publishes 90 days after the date of service for participating providers and 180 days for out-of-network providers, counted from the last date for consecutive-day services such as a hospital stay. The exceptions are a law requiring a longer period, an agreement allowing more time, coordination of benefits (counted from the processing date on the primary carrier's EOB), and evidence of extraordinary circumstances. Cigna adds that the contract prohibits balance billing the patient for claims denied as late (Cigna).

Humana publishes its figures plan by plan. Its Illinois HMO D-SNP billing guide, effective January 1, 2026, says 365 days from the date of service for all providers in and out of network, with the clock starting at the primary payer's payment or nonpayment when there is other coverage (Humana). We did not find a national commercial figure in a Humana document we could read, so for Humana commercial plans: see your contract.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is a group of independent companies, and each sets its own limit in its manual and your contract. Florida Blue's is in the Florida section. A BlueCard claim for an out-of-state member follows the rules your local plan gives you, so read your own plan's manual first.

TRICARE claims must be filed no later than one year after the services are provided. A claim returned for more information can be resubmitted by the later of one year after the service or 90 days after it was returned, and exceptions exist for retroactive eligibility, administrative error, mental incompetency, and delays by other health insurance (32 CFR 199.7(d)).

For an in-network provider, the timely filing limit is whatever the signed agreement says, and the manual is the fallback. Every commercial source on this page says so in its own words: Florida Blue (“within the time set forth in their Florida Blue participating provider Agreement(s)”), UnitedHealthcare (“Refer to your Agreement for your specific timely filing requirements”), Cigna (unless the “provider agreement specifically allows for additional time”).

That has three consequences a published table cannot show you:

1. Your number can be shorter than the table. UnitedHealthcare “allows at least 90 days”; a delegated or capitated arrangement, or an older agreement, can say something else. Pull the timely filing clause from each agreement and put it in your billing system, payer by payer.
2. State law can make it longer, never shorter, for fully insured plans. Florida's 6-month rule applies to insurers it governs; a self-funded employer plan is governed by its own documents.
3. Out of network, the plan document rules. There is no agreement, so the member's plan and the payer's nonparticipating policy decide, which is why Cigna and UnitedHealthcare publish a separate 180-day figure.

A practice that has never read its agreements is working from someone else's table, which is usually how a whole month of claims ages out at once.

CARC 29 is the X12 claim adjustment reason code for a late claim; its official text is “The time limit for filing has expired.” (X12, Claim Adjustment Reason Codes). It usually arrives with group code CO (contractual obligation), meaning the provider absorbs it and the patient may not be billed.

A timely filing denial is worth appealing when one of these is true:

1. You have proof the claim was accepted in time. Send the acceptance record above with a reconsideration or administrative appeal. Florida Blue lists Timely Filing as its own appeal type, due within one year of the remittance date (Florida Blue manual §03).
2. The payer caused the delay. A payer error, a lost claim the payer acknowledged, or a records request the payer sat on. Medicare's version of this is the administrative-error exception in 424.44(b)(1).
3. Eligibility changed retroactively. Retroactive Medicare entitlement, a retroactive Medicare Advantage disenrollment, a Medicaid eligibility decision that came late, or a primary payer that recouped. Medicare, TRICARE and Florida Medicaid all name versions of this exception.
4. You filed the primary on time and the secondary clock started later. Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Humana (in its D-SNP guide) count a secondary claim from the primary payer's EOB or decision; Florida law gives 90 days after the primary's final determination.

With Original Medicare, remember that the denial itself is not appealable (§70.4): you either fit a 424.44(b) exception or the contractor can informally review it at your request. And if none of these is true, the honest move is a recorded write-off and a fix to whatever let the claim sit, which is usually a rejection nobody worked.

Want a second set of eyes on a stack of CARC 29 denials? Send them to our denial management team and we will sort the appealable ones from the write-offs.

1. Load each payer's contract limit, not a web table, into the billing system, with a separate field for corrected claims and appeals.
2. Work rejections daily. A rejected claim is invisible to the payer and its clock keeps running.
3. Run an aging report by days remaining, not days outstanding: a 30-day-old PIP claim is past due; a 30-day-old Medicare claim has eleven months.
4. Save acceptance records (277CA or payer acceptance reports) for every claim, where you can find them a year later.
5. Verify eligibility and coordination of benefits at intake, so the first claim goes to the right payer in the right order.
6. Hold new-provider claims on purpose, with a date to release them, when enrollment is pending.

Timely filing losses show up as aged A/R long before they show up as write-offs, and the same habits that cut days in A/R prevent them, see how to reduce days in accounts receivable.