Pabau GO app

The new Pabau GO is heredownload on the App Store

Download on the App Store
Book a demo Book a demo
Operations & management

Claim.MD clearinghouse review: What it is and how it works

Avatar photo Aleksandar Kochovski
Last Updated: August 18, 2026
Reviewed by: Avatar photo Lucy Galloway
Key takeaways

Key takeaways

Yes, Claim.MD is a medical claims clearinghouse, and it has been routing electronic claims for US providers for over four decades.

It handles electronic claims, remittance files, real-time eligibility, claim status and payer enrollment, so your staff stop mailing forms and calling payers.

Published plans run $30, $60 and $120 a month, which is rare in a market that hides prices behind sales calls.

Pabau’s US claims integration runs through Claim.MD, so read this as an informed review with an interest in the outcome.

The verdict is a strong fit for independent practices and the software they run on, and weaker for teams wanting predictive denial tools.

Claim.MD is a US medical claims clearinghouse. It sits between your practice and the insurance companies you bill. Claims go out one side, and remittances and eligibility answers come back the other. Its own FAQ describes it as a comprehensive claims clearinghouse, and its about page dates the company back over four decades.

Here is the disclosure, up front. Practice management software like Pabau needs a clearinghouse to move US claims, and we chose Claim.MD as ours. That gives us an interest in it looking good. It also gives us something no review site has, which is the engineering and billing experience of building against Claim.MD and running claims through it.

So this review draws on two things. The first is published reviews from named sources, criticism included. The second is what we saw ourselves, running claims end to end in the sandbox from practice setup through submitted, adjudicated and paid claims.

Is Claim.MD a clearinghouse? What it actually does

Yes. Claim.MD is a clearinghouse in the standard sense of the word, and nothing more ambitious than that. It validates and routes electronic transactions between providers and payers. It does not employ billers on your behalf, and it is not an EHR or a practice management system.

What that covers in practice, mapped to the job each function does:

FunctionWhat it handlesWhat it replaces
Claim submission837P and 837I files, plus CSV, XLS, XML and print image uploadsMailing CMS-1500 and UB-04 forms, or keying claims into payer portals
Claim validationReal-time edits covering SNIP levels 1 to 7, diagnoses, CPT and NCCIFinding out weeks later that a claim never reached adjudication
RemittanceERA downloads as 835, XML or CSV, searchable for up to 10 yearsPaper explanations of benefits and manual payment posting
EligibilityReal-time checks in the portal or by API, on over 400 payersCalling the payer before the appointment
Claim statusStatus updates and a time-stamped history for every claimPhoning payers to ask where a claim went
EnrollmentOnline enrollment forms and payer-by-payer trackingChasing payer paperwork by fax with no record of it
Payer directoryA public payer list with IDs and the services each payer acceptsGuessing payer IDs and rebilling when they are wrong

One number deserves care, because it is the one everybody wants. Claim.MD does not publish a single payer total anywhere on its site. Its about page describes connections to Medicare, Medicaid, Blue plans and thousands of commercial insurers. The public payer list runs past 200 pages of payer IDs. Through our own integration, Pabau submits to thousands of US payers.

Eligibility is the narrower network, and it is worth knowing before you switch. Claim.MD’s provider services page puts real-time eligibility at over 400 payers. Claims reach far more payers than benefit checks do, which is true of every clearinghouse we looked at.

How Claim.MD works, from our integration experience

We built against Claim.MD’s API rather than its portal. What follows is the machine view of the workflow a biller sees on screen.

Flow diagram showing a claim travelling from a practice as an 837P file to a clearinghouse, on to the payer, and back as an 835 ERA, with a dashed rejection loop returning to the practice
Claim.MD is the middle box here, and the dashed loop is the part that decides how much rework your billers do.

Setup and enrollment. A practice is identified by its tax ID and its NPIs, and each payer is linked to that account before claims flow. Some payers accept claims with no paperwork at all. Others need an enrollment approved first, and the payer list tells you which, payer by payer. That approval sits with the payer, not with the clearinghouse, so the API does not remove the wait. What the API does remove is the guesswork about where each enrollment stands.

Validation before submission. Claims are checked as they arrive. The edits run against payer-specific rules along with diagnosis, CPT and NCCI logic. A failed claim comes back with the field that caused it. That is what lets software show a biller something they can fix in seconds.

Acknowledgments and remittances. A submitted claim produces a trail. Acknowledgments confirm the payer received the file, and status updates report what happened next. The 835 remittance then arrives with the payment detail attached to the claim it belongs to.

Sandbox to live. We ran the full lifecycle in the sandbox before switching any practice on. Claims were created, validated, submitted, adjudicated and paid, with the remittances coming back and settling against the right invoices. That is the test we would ask any vendor to pass.

Claim.MD pricing summary

Claim.MD publishes three flat monthly plans on its own site, per tax ID. Basic is $30 a month and you pay for what you use, at $0.50 a claim and $0.30 an eligibility check. Small Volume is $60 a month and covers 100 claims, ERAs and eligibility checks, with extra claims at $0.30 each. Unlimited is $120 a month for unlimited claims and ERAs, plus 1,000 eligibility checks a month.

A few line items sit outside the plans. Paper or faxed claims and electronic appeals are $1.00 each for five pages, then $0.20 a page. Extra eligibility checks on the Unlimited plan are $0.02 or $0.10 each, depending on the payer. Additional tax IDs are priced separately, and one is included on Unlimited. Every figure here comes from Claim.MD’s own site.

What users say: Claim.MD reviews around the web

Third-party reviews of Claim.MD land in a similar place. The product does its job, and the complaints are about commercial policy.

Clearinghouses.org rates it four stars out of five and marks it highly recommended. ChoosingTherapy’s review for therapists calls it one of the most widely used clearinghouses in that field. It singles out the real-time scrub that flags missing information as a claim is submitted. It also credits the alerts that surface a missing attachment or a payer that never confirmed receipt.

Atlas Billers, a billing company that publishes vendor guides, praises the published pricing. It also rates its support team highly, noting they truly understand billing, and puts typical setup at about a week.

However, it also there is no bundling and no long-term contract. Claim.MD invests less in new tooling than the enterprise platforms do. There is no denial prediction, no predictive analytics and no automated denial management.

Who Claim.MD fits (And who it doesn’t)

Strong fitLook harder
Independent and small practices that want a predictable monthly billEnterprise groups that want denial prediction and analytics built in
Billing companies watching cost per claim across many tax IDsPractices that want a billing service, not a pipe to send claims through
Software vendors integrating claims into their own product by APITeams whose main payers fall outside the eligibility network
Anyone who wants to know the price before a sales callBuyers who need a single vendor for claims, coding and collections

The pattern is clear enough. Claim.MD is built for people who know what a clean claim looks like and want it delivered cheaply and quickly. It is a weaker choice for a practice hoping software will decide which denials to work first.

How Pabau runs your Claim.MD claims from the invoice

The best clearinghouse is one your team never has to open. In Pabau, a claim is built from the invoice that already exists. It is validated, then submitted to thousands of US payers through our Claim.MD integration. Nobody re-keys a CMS-1500 into a second system.

Eligibility runs from the client card and returns a full benefit report. Reception can quote a copay while the patient is still on the phone. ERAs come back and settle the claim automatically, matching payments to what was billed. When something goes wrong, the CARC denial reason sits on the claim with a full activity history. Secondary claims, corrections, voids and appeals all start from there.

The setup side lives in Pabau too. You browse the payer directory, link the payers you bill, and track each enrollment as it moves. CPT and ICD-10 catalogs sit inside the invoice. You can still print or export a superbill or a CMS-1500 when someone asks for paper.

Submit clean claims without leaving your practice software

Pabau validates, submits and tracks US insurance claims from the invoice through its Claim.MD integration, with real-time eligibility from the client card. ERAs settle claims automatically, so your team spends its time on denials that need a human.

Pabau clinic management dashboard

Conclusion

Claim.MD earns its place on a shortlist for most independent US practices. The prices are public. Validation catches errors while they are still cheap to fix. The claim history answers questions billers usually have to phone a payer about. What you give up is the predictive layer the enterprise platforms sell.

Weigh that verdict against the disclosure at the top. We picked Claim.MD after evaluating the market, and we ran claims through it before we recommended it to anyone. Read the plan terms yourself, check your top payers against the payer list, and ask about enrollment for the ones that need it.

The clearinghouse is only half the decision, though. What decides how much time your team loses is whether claims start life inside your practice software or in a separate portal. Book a demo to see how Pabau validates, submits and settles US claims from the invoice, without a second system to log into.

Continue your research

Continue your research

New to how claims are routed? What is a medical claims clearinghouse? explains the model, the costs, and how to compare one provider against another.

Decoding a denial on a remittance? Denial codes in medical billing walks through the 20 most common CARC codes and the fix for each one.

Still filling in claim forms by hand? The CMS-1500 form guide covers every box on the form, plus a free template you can download.

Billing patients who claim reimbursement themselves? What is a superbill? shows what the document has to contain to be accepted.

Fixing the wider billing process? Our revenue cycle management guide maps every stage from booking to paid claim.

Frequently asked questions

Is Claim.MD a clearinghouse?

Yes. Claim.MD is a medical claims clearinghouse. It validates and routes electronic claims, remittances, eligibility checks and claim status between US providers and payers.

Is Claim.MD good?

For most independent practices, yes. Clearinghouses.org rates it four out of five, and reviewers praise the published pricing and the validation. The criticism is aimed at account policy and the absence of predictive denial tools.

How does Claim.MD work?

You upload or create a claim, and Claim.MD checks it against payer rules before sending it. The payer acknowledges the claim, adjudicates it, and returns an 835 remittance that Claim.MD ties back to the original claim.

How many payers does Claim.MD support?

Claim.MD does not publish a single total. It describes connections to Medicare, Medicaid, Blue plans and thousands of commercial insurers, and lists real-time eligibility for over 400 payers. Pabau’s integration reaches thousands of US payers.

How much does Claim.MD cost?

Claim.MD publishes three plans per tax ID. Basic is $30 a month with per-transaction fees, Small Volume is $60 a month for 100 transactions, and Unlimited is $120 a month. Our Claim.MD pricing breakdown works through what each plan costs in practice.

×