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Medicaid does not pay claims as it adjudicates them. Each program accumulates adjudicated claims and releases payment on a fixed weekly cycle, called a checkwrite, so the day your money moves is set by that calendar rather than by the day the claim finished adjudication. The 835 is generated when the batch is released, and the EFT settles one or two banking days after that. That is why a remittance advice shows up in your practice management system days before the matching deposit shows up in your account.

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Weekly checkwrites

State Medicaid programs publish their cycles, which makes them the clearest illustration. North Carolina’s NCTracks runs one checkwrite per week: claims adjudicated by Friday midnight are approved on Tuesday (the date printed on the remittance), remittance advices and 835s are available by 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, and EFTs are initiated Wednesday and typically post Thursday afternoon. Most states follow the same weekly shape, a handful pay every other week, and several skip a cycle at their fiscal year end. The MSO-PC Wiki maintains the full payment cycle for every state, with cutoff days, remittance timing, and a link to each program’s published schedule; the DSO-PC Wiki covers the dental programs, where a dental benefit manager often pays on a different calendar than the state. Because the cycle is weekly, a claim that finishes adjudication just after the cutoff does not slip by a day — it waits for the next checkwrite.