Implementation acknowledgement

Availity automatically sends negative implementation acknowledgements to your organization's ReceiveFiles folder. This file indicates that Availity received the transmission file and it had errors, particularly X12 and HIPAA syntax errors. Implementation acknowledgements are also referred to as 999 files.

File extensions

  • .999 (X12 file) – This is the default format.

  • .99T (human readable text file)

When is this response file sent?

Within 24 hours, and only if errors occur.

  • Negative implementation acknowledgements are not optional.

Additional details

The X12N EDI standard 999 Implementation Acknowledgement transaction (.999) is used to report the acceptance or rejection of each transaction set (ST/SE) within each functional group (GS/GE) contained in the inbound file of ASC X12N 5010 EDI transactions.

  • Negative implementation acknowledgement - If the entire file does not pass the validation, AvailityAvaility rejects it entirely and sends a negative implementation acknowledgement (999) to your organization's ReceiveFiles mail box. The file is not processed further, and the transactions are not routed to the payer.

  • Partial implementation acknowledgement - If the file contains multiple transaction sets and some of them pass validation and others do not, Availity partially rejects the file. This means that Availity rejects or accepts the file at the transaction-set level. For partially rejected files, Availity sends an implementation acknowledgement (999) to your organization's ReceiveFiles mail box. Rejected transaction sets are not processed further, and they are not routed to the payer. Accepted transaction sets continue through processing.

  • Positive implementation acknowledgement - If the entire file passes validation in this step and you set up your EDI reporting preferences to receive positive implementation acknowledgements (999), Availity sends a positive acknowledgement file to your organization's ReceiveFiles mail box. The accepted transaction sets proceed to the next step in processing.

  • If the file contains multiple ISA/IEA segments, Availity sends an acknowledgement for each ISA/IEA pairing.

Next steps

If Availity rejects or partially rejects any or all transaction sets, you must correct the errors in your EDI billing system, rebatch all transactions in the rejected transaction sets, and upload the new file to Availity again.

Important: You must rebatch even those transactions in the rejected transaction set that do not need correction, because as part of the rejected transaction set, they have not been routed to the payer yet. Also, you must upload the corrected transaction sets using a new interchange control number. If you attempt to upload them using the previous interchange control number, Availity rejects the file as a duplicate.