If you are a healthcare provider participating in insurance networks, your CAQH ProView profile is one of the most important administrative assets your practice maintains. CAQH ProView is a centralized credentialing database used by over 900 health plans, hospitals, and healthcare organizations to verify provider information during credentialing and re-credentialing. When your profile lapses or contains outdated information, the consequences are immediate and costly.
What Is CAQH Attestation?
CAQH attestation is the process of reviewing, updating, and electronically signing your ProView profile to confirm that all the information it contains — licenses, DEA certifications, malpractice insurance, practice locations, hospital affiliations, education history, and specialty details — is accurate and current. CAQH requires providers to complete this process every 120 days (approximately quarterly). During attestation, you must review every section of your profile, upload any new or renewed documents, correct any outdated information, and submit your electronic signature.
What Happens When Attestation Lapses
When a CAQH profile falls out of attestation, the consequences cascade quickly across your revenue cycle:
- Credentialing freezes — Health plans cannot complete credentialing or re-credentialing when the profile is expired, stalling new payer enrollments entirely.
- Claim denials — Some payers cross-reference CAQH data during claims processing. Outdated provider information (lapsed license, incorrect address, expired malpractice coverage) triggers denials.
- Network termination — Repeated attestation failures can lead payers to terminate a provider from their network, requiring a full re-credentialing cycle that takes 90 to 180 days.
- Revenue gaps — During any period where a provider cannot bill a payer due to lapsed credentials, services rendered go unreimbursed unless the patient pays out-of-pocket.
The Attestation Timeline: Key Dates to Track
CAQH sends email reminders 30 days before your attestation deadline, but relying on email reminders alone is risky — they can be missed, filtered to spam, or sent to an outdated email address. Best practice is to maintain an internal tracking calendar with attestation due dates for every provider in your group. Set reminders at 45 days, 30 days, and 14 days before each deadline. The attestation itself takes 30 to 60 minutes per provider if everything is current, but can take significantly longer if documents have expired and need to be renewed and uploaded.
Documents That Expire and Need Regular Updates
Several categories of documents in your CAQH profile have expiration dates that must be tracked independently of the attestation cycle:
- State medical licenses — Renewal cycles vary by state (annual to triennial). A lapsed license will block credentialing with every payer in that state.
- DEA registration — Federal DEA certificates expire every three years. An expired DEA in CAQH can delay or deny enrollment with payers that require it.
- Malpractice insurance — Policies renew annually. Your CAQH profile must always reflect current coverage dates, carrier information, and coverage limits.
- Board certifications — While many are issued for 10-year periods, some specialties require more frequent recertification. Verify dates against each certifying board.
- Collaborative practice agreements — For advanced practice providers (NPs, PAs), some states require current collaborative agreements on file.
Best Practices for Staying Current
- Assign a dedicated person or team to own CAQH management — do not leave it to individual providers.
- Build a master expiration tracker for every document, every provider, updated monthly.
- Complete attestation at least one week before the deadline to allow time for corrections.
- Upload document renewals to CAQH immediately when received — do not wait for the next attestation cycle.
- Verify that CAQH email notifications are going to a monitored inbox, not an individual provider's personal email.
- After each attestation, spot-check the profile by comparing it against your practice's current records for accuracy.
When to Outsource CAQH Management
For solo practitioners, managing a single CAQH profile quarterly is manageable. But for groups with multiple providers — especially those practicing in multiple states or with frequent staffing changes — CAQH management becomes a significant administrative burden. Outsourcing to a credentialing partner ensures no deadline is missed, documents are uploaded proactively as they renew, and profiles stay audit-ready at all times. The cost of outsourcing is a fraction of the revenue lost from a single lapsed attestation that blocks billing for even one payer.