The profile every payer pulls
CAQH ProView, set up right and never allowed to lapse.
Most commercial payers pull credentialing data from one place: your CAQH profile. Set it up clean and keep it attested, and applications move. Let it drift, and everything built on it quietly stalls.
between attestations, forever, per CAQH's own cycle
what ProView costs providers, payers fund it
feeding most commercial credentialing decisions
each one a place an application can silently stall
CAQH ProView is the industry's shared credentialing database. Instead of sending your license, insurance, work history, and education to every payer separately, you maintain one profile and authorize payers to pull from it. That design is why it is both the biggest time saver in credentialing and its most common single point of failure.
When the profile is complete, documented, and attested, payers that use CAQH move on your application with data they trust. When any one of those three slips, nothing announces it. Applications simply stop moving, and the practice finds out weeks later, usually from a denial or a termination notice rather than a phone call.
This page covers the setup that prevents the stalls, the 120 day attestation cycle, and the three failure modes we see most. Payer specific behavior, which payers pull CAQH and when, lives in the payer playbooks.
Setup, in order
Six steps, and the order matters
Every stalled CAQH profile we untangle failed at one of these six. Do them in order, check documents off as you gather them, and yours will be the clean kind.
Gather the documents first
State license, DEA if you hold one, malpractice certificate of insurance with current dates, W-9, board certification, and a CV with month and year dates. Setup goes from painful to routine when nothing has to be hunted mid-form.
Register and claim your ID
Accept the emailed invitation if a payer rostered you, or self-register on ProView. Use an email the practice actually monitors. The profile follows you across employers, so it belongs to you, not to a job.
Complete every section, not most of them
Personal information, education and training, work history, licenses, insurance, and the disclosure questions. Work history needs to be continuous: gaps beyond a few months require a short written explanation, and unexplained gaps are a classic silent staller.
Upload documents that match the data
The certificate of insurance must show the dates and limits the insurance section claims. The license upload must match the license number typed in. Mismatches between typed data and uploaded documents are what credentialing analysts bounce first.
Authorize the payers
Payers can only pull a profile they are authorized to access. Global authorization covers plans you apply to; specific authorization means every new payer needs a manual grant. Applications have died waiting on an authorization nobody knew was missing.
Attest, and put the next attestation on a clock
The initial attestation makes the profile usable. The re-attestation 120 days later is the one practices forget. Put it on a calendar that outlives staff turnover, or hand it to someone whose job is watching it.
The gather-first checklist
0 of 6 in handCheck items off as you gather them. Setup goes from painful to routine when nothing has to be hunted mid-form.
The clock
The 120 day cycle is where CAQH problems are born
Every 120 days, CAQH asks you to confirm the profile is still accurate. The attestation takes minutes. Missing it takes nothing at all, which is the problem: the reminder goes to one inbox, staff change, and the profile silently goes stale. Payers that pull from CAQH stop trusting the data, new applications wait, and recredentialing cycles that land on a stale profile put participating providers at risk.
The documents inside the profile run on their own clocks too. A malpractice certificate expires annually. Licenses renew on state cycles. An attested profile carrying an expired document fails just as surely as an unattested one. Keeping CAQH healthy means tracking every one of those dates, not just the attestation.
For every provider we manage, the 120 day clock and every document expiration sit on a tracked timeline with the work scheduled ahead of the deadline. That is a standing part of our compliance monitoring and provider data management work, not an add-on.
When is your next attestation due?
Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Where it goes wrong
The three CAQH failures we see weekly
The lapsed attestation
The 120 day prompt went to a departed office manager's inbox. Ninety days later a recredentialing cycle hits an unattested profile and a participating provider is suddenly at risk of termination for paperwork nobody saw.
The expired document
The profile is attested and current, but the malpractice certificate it carries expired in March. Payers pulling the profile see an expired COI and the application waits while the payer decides whether to ask or just deny.
The authorization gap
The application went to the payer, the payer went to CAQH, and CAQH said no, because access was never granted. Nobody tells the practice. The file sits in the one queue no follow-up call thinks to check.
Two ways to get this right
Use this guide
Everything on this page is enough to set the profile up clean: the gather first checklist, the six steps in order, and the calculator to put your next attestation on a calendar that outlives staff turnover. It costs you one to two focused hours now and a small ritual every 120 days, forever.
Start with the checklistHand it to us
We set the profile up, keep every document current, complete every attestation on schedule, and audit payer authorizations, for every provider you have. The 120 day clock becomes our problem, and it sits on the same tracked timeline as your licenses, COIs, and recredentialing dates. Nothing depends on anyone remembering.
Start with your NPIQuestions
CAQH, answered plainly
How often do I have to attest my CAQH profile?
Every 120 days. CAQH prompts you as the date approaches, but the prompt lands in whatever email the profile has on file, which is how attestations quietly lapse when staff turn over. An expired attestation means payers stop pulling your data, and applications that depend on it stall.
Does CAQH ProView cost providers anything?
No. ProView is free for providers. Participating payers and health plans fund it, which is also why they treat it as the default source for credentialing data.
How do I get a CAQH ID?
Two ways: a payer that wants to credential you adds you to its roster and CAQH emails you a registration invitation, or you self-register on the ProView site and receive an ID directly. Either way the profile is yours, not the payer's.
How long does the initial CAQH setup take?
Plan on one to two focused hours if your documents are gathered first, longer if you are hunting for work history dates and insurance certificates as you go. The profile asks for your full professional history, and gaps of more than a few months need a written explanation.
What happens to my applications if my attestation lapses?
Payers that pull credentialing data from CAQH see a profile they cannot rely on. New applications sit, recredentialing stalls, and some plans will administratively deny or terminate if the profile stays unattested long enough. The fix is simple and the damage is slow, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Can someone manage CAQH for me?
Yes. You can grant practice staff or a credentialing service access to maintain the profile, refresh expiring documents, and complete attestations on schedule. That is part of what we do for every provider we manage, with the 120 day clock tracked so nothing depends on anyone's memory.
Never think about CAQH again.
Sign up with an NPI, the registry fills your profile, and the 120 day clock becomes our job from that moment on.