If you are asking what insurances have a 90 day timely filing limit, the honest answer is that it is the wrong unit. A 90 day window belongs to a specific provider contract or a specific plan document, not to a carrier's name. The same carrier can give you 90 days on one network agreement and 365 on another. Ninety days does show up, and it shows up most often in state Medicaid and Medicaid managed care, in some HMO and closed network contracts, and in older commercial agreements nobody ever renegotiated.
That distinction is not pedantry. It decides whether you write the claim off or appeal it.
Why the payer lists you find online will get you burned
Search this question and you land on a table. Carrier on the left, a number on the right, no context anywhere. Those tables get copied from one billing blog to the next, and some entries trace back the better part of a decade.
A filing number means nothing without four qualifiers attached:
- Which product line. A carrier's dental PPO, its dental HMO, and the self funded plan it merely administers can each carry a different deadline.
- In network or out. With no contract there is no negotiated window, so the plan document governs, and out of network deadlines are frequently shorter.
- Which state or licensee. Regional entities under a national brand hold their own contracts.
- Which plan year. Provider manuals get reissued, usually effective January 1.
The number a payer will actually enforce sits in two documents: your executed participating provider agreement, and the payer's current provider manual, which most agreements incorporate by reference. Everything else is hearsay. For self funded employer plans, add the summary plan description, because the sponsor sets the terms and the carrier only processes claims.
What is the timely filing limit for most insurances?
Most US dental claims fall between 90 and 365 days from the date of service, and 180 days is the most commonly quoted middle ground on commercial PPO agreements. Treat the table below as a map of where to look, not a lookup table for any payer.
| Coverage type | Commonly quoted window | Where the binding number lives |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial dental PPO, in network | 90 to 365 days, often 180 | Your agreement plus the current provider manual |
| Commercial dental, out of network | Set by the plan, often shorter | Summary plan description or benefit booklet |
| Self funded plan, carrier administered | Set by the sponsor, wide variance | Summary plan description, from the employer or administrator |
| State Medicaid and CHIP dental | 90 to 365 days, state dependent | State Medicaid provider manual or billing handbook |
| Medicaid managed care dental | Often shorter than the state fee for service window | The managed care plan's provider manual |
| Medicare Advantage with a dental benefit | Commonly one year, plan dependent | The plan's provider manual |
| Original Medicare, covered medically necessary services | One calendar year from the date of service | Fixed by federal rule, see the CMS claims manual |
| Medical claims for dental procedures | Commonly 90 to 365 days | The medical payer's agreement, separate from your dental one |
That last row catches practices out. If you bill medical for surgical extractions, sleep appliances or trauma, you are working against a second contract with its own clock, as our guide to billing medical insurance for dental procedures explains.
Does BCBS have a timely filing limit?
Every Blue plan has one. But Blue Cross Blue Shield is a brand shared by more than thirty independent licensees, not one company with one rulebook. A deadline confirmed with the Texas plan tells you nothing about the Illinois plan, and a dental product under a Blue brand is sometimes administered by a separate dental company with its own claim address, portal and filing window.
Two practical notes. Out of area claims routed through your local plan are generally adjudicated against the member's home plan rules, so the deadline belongs to the plan that issued the card, not the one nearest you. And where your agreement and the manual disagree, the agreement's claims section usually states which document controls.
To verify, open that specific plan's provider manual from its portal and search for "timely filing" or "claim submission." A phone rep's answer is not evidence in an appeal. A dated manual page is.
Can you file an insurance claim 3 months later?
Against a 180 or 365 day limit, three months is comfortable. Against a 90 day limit it is late, for a reason people skip.
| Date of service | 90 days later | Three calendar months later | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 15 | April 15 | April 15 | 0 days |
| March 15 | June 13 | June 15 | 2 days late |
| July 15 | October 13 | October 15 | 2 days late |
| December 15 | March 15 | March 15 | 0 days, 1 in a leap year |
Two days does not sound like much until it is a 1,400 dollar crown. Ninety days means ninety days on a calendar, and it is usually counted to the date the payer receives the claim, not the date you pressed send.
Filing at the edge also leaves no room for one rejection. A claim that bounces at the clearinghouse for a missing subscriber ID never reached the payer, so it never stopped the clock. Find that rejection on day 88 and you get one attempt. Set your working deadline at the payer's limit minus a full reject and resubmit cycle.
What is the timely filing limit for insurance companies in 2026?
There is no single 2026 number, and as of this writing no federal law sets a filing deadline for commercial plans. The one federal rule that fixes a number is narrow: original Medicare requires claims within one calendar year of the date of service.
Beyond that, two things move the answer. Some states set a statutory floor for certain fully insured plans, which can make a shorter contract clause unenforceable for the plans the statute covers. And self funded employer plans governed by ERISA sit largely outside state insurance law, which is why the same carrier can give two different answers for two employer groups in the same zip code. Rules here change, so confirm the current position with your state insurance department rather than with a blog post, including this one.
The operational takeaway is simpler than the legal one. Provider manuals are commonly reissued effective January 1, so re-pull each contracted payer's manual every January and read the claims submission section.
When the clock actually starts
Most timely filing losses in dental are not about the number. They are about which date it counts from.
| Situation | Date the clock commonly starts | What to confirm in writing |
|---|---|---|
| Single visit procedure | Date of service | Nothing, this is the default |
| Crown, bridge, denture | Seat or delivery date | Whether the payer instead uses the prep or impression date |
| Multi visit endodontics | Completion date | The payer's definition of completion |
| Orthodontic case | Banding date for the initial claim | How continuation claims are dated |
| Secondary claim | Date on the primary payer's EOB or remittance | Whether the secondary counts from that date or the original date of service |
| Corrected or replacement claim | Date of the original determination | The corrected claim window, which is often shorter |
| Appeal after a denial | Date of the denial | The appeal window, which is a separate deadline |
The secondary claim row is the expensive one. When a primary payer takes eleven weeks, a 90 day secondary window measured from the date of service is gone before you had an EOB to attach. Most payers count secondary filing from primary adjudication for that reason, but verify it per payer. Our guide to coordination of benefits in dental insurance walks through the sequencing.
Building a deadline record you can actually defend
A one afternoon project that pays for itself the first time you win an appeal.
- Rank your contracted payers by dollar volume. The top fifteen usually cover most of your production.
- Pull the current provider manual from each provider portal and search the claims submission section. Save the PDF with its version date, because an appeal may turn on the version in effect on your date of service.
- Read your executed agreement's claims article. Contracted rates, adjustment rights and lookback periods live nearby, so it repays the read for reimbursement reasons too.
- Record four fields per payer, not one: initial filing limit, corrected claim limit, appeal window, and whether the clock runs to submission or to payer receipt.
- Set the escalation at half the limit. A 90 day payer gets worked on day 45. A 365 day payer still gets worked at 60, because aging claims do not improve.
- Keep clearinghouse acceptance reports. A "sent" status in your practice software proves the claim left your building. Only a payer acceptance acknowledgment proves it arrived, and that is what an appeal needs.
When the denial lands anyway
Do not adjust the balance first and investigate later. A timely filing denial from an automated edit is often reversible when you can show the payer accepted the claim inside the window. And a claim denied for a different reason, sat on for six weeks, then resubmitted, becomes a timely filing loss on top of the original problem. That is how a root canal denial turns into a full write off. The mechanics of proving submission and drafting the appeal are in our guide to dental claims denied for timely filing.
In network contracts generally include a hold harmless clause, so you cannot bill the patient for a claim that died from your own late filing. The write off is yours. Curo tracks each payer's filing window against the date of service, flags claims before the window closes, and assembles the proof of submission when a timely filing denial arrives, which you can see in denial management.
Start with one payer
Pick your highest volume contracted payer this week. Open the current provider manual, find the claims submission clause, and write down four numbers and the date you found them. Do that fifteen times over a month and you have what no aggregated list can give you: a filing calendar built from your own contracts and correct for the plans you actually bill.