Medicare Advantage Inquiries Available Via Blue e This Fall

Beginning October 1, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC) is replacing the HealthTrio online service for eligibility, claim status, and authorization status for our Medicare Advantage/Blue Medicare^SM business with Blue e^SM. Now, providers will use Blue e for all lines of business, which will be more convenient and efficient for your office staff.  All HealthTrio transactions for Medicare Advantage will be disabled as of October 1, and the roll-out will be complete by October 11.

In August, Blue e expanded the health eligibility inquiry function to include Medicare Advantage products, so you should already be using Blue e to check benefits for your Medicare Advantage patients. Beginning September 23, you will be able to check claim status inquiries for these senior patients too.  And, on October 11, the new Blue e transaction--Medicare Advantage Authorization Status--will be available on your home page to replace HealthTrio’s authorization status inquiries.

As a result of this transition to this new functionality, we will have a 10-day service gap from October 1 through October 11 during which it will not be feasible to conduct authorization status inquiries for your Medicare Advantage patients. During this time, please call the Blue Medicare Provider Line at 1-888-296-9790 for assistance with your Medicare Advantage authorization status requests. We apologize for this inconvenience; however, we hope that the improved service of having all of your Medicare Advantage inquiries located in one place will compensate for the inconvenience of this temporary online service outage.

If you are not already registered for Blue e or you need to add a provider NPI to your account, please go to http://www.bluecrossnc.com/content/providers/forms-and-documentation.htm and select the appropriate link. If you have questions about how to use the Blue e, contact the Blue Cross NC ESolutions HelpDesk at 1-888-333-8594.