CO-140 denial code
Patient or insured health identification number and name do not match
How to fix it
Verify the member ID and the name exactly as shown on the insurance card, including suffixes and hyphenation, and resubmit.
How to prevent it
Use electronic eligibility verification, which returns the payer's own spelling, rather than manual card transcription.
In practice
A claim returns CO-140 — the patient or insured health identification number and name do not match. The member ID is correct and the name is not, or the reverse.
A common cause is a dependent billed under their own name against a policy held in a subscriber's name, where the payer expects the subscriber's details in the insured fields and the patient's in the patient fields.
Another is a name that changed — marriage, divorce, legal change — updated in the practice's record and not with the payer, or the reverse. Both records are internally consistent and they do not match each other.
What sits behind it
CO-140 is closely related to CO-31 and the distinction is subtle. CO-31 means the payer cannot identify the patient at all. CO-140 means it found a record but the identifiers do not agree with what was submitted.
The practical consequence is the same: verify against the payer's own record rather than against the card or the patient's account. Electronic eligibility returns the payer's spelling, which is what adjudication will match against.
Where a name has genuinely changed, the patient has to update it with the payer. The practice cannot fix a mismatch by changing its own record to match the payer if the payer holds outdated information — that only relocates the discrepancy.
Related codes
Terms used here — Eligibility Verification · Claim Scrubbing · Rejection
How we handle it — Eligibility Verification · Claims Management · Denial Management
Primary sources
The rules behind CO-140, at the bodies that publish them.
- Remittance Advice Remark Codes (RARC) (opens in a new tab)
X12 — The remark codes that qualify a CARC on an ERA. Reading the RARC is usually what tells you whether a denial is appealable.
- CMS-1500 claim form standards (opens in a new tab)
National Uniform Claim Committee — Maintainer of the CMS-1500 professional claim form and its data element definitions, plus the provider taxonomy code set.
- NPI Registry (NPPES) (opens in a new tab)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services — Public lookup and management for National Provider Identifiers. A stale NPPES record is a quietly common cause of enrollment and claim rejections.
Every denial code with a guide
Authorization
Bundling
Contractual
Coverage
Data quality
- CO-16Read the Paired RARC
- CO-18Exact Duplicate Claim
- CO-140Member ID and Name Do Not Match
- MA130Rejected, No Appeal Rights
Documentation
Eligibility
Liability and workers comp
Patient responsibility
Provider eligibility
Timely filing
Looking for a different code? Search all 190 CARC and RARC codes
Questions about CO-140
CO-31 means the payer cannot identify the patient at all using the identifiers submitted. CO-140 means it located a record but the name and member ID do not agree with what was sent. Both are resolved by verifying against the payer's own record.
Because the policy is held in the subscriber's name. Payers generally expect the subscriber's details in the insured fields and the patient's in the patient fields, and billing a dependent's name in both produces a mismatch.
Verify how the payer holds the name and submit that. Where the payer's record is genuinely outdated — after a marriage or legal name change — the patient has to update it with the payer; changing only the practice's record relocates the discrepancy rather than resolving it.
Use electronic eligibility verification, which returns the payer's own spelling of the name and the exact member ID format, rather than transcribing from a card.
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