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Claim adjustment reason code

CO-140: Patient identification number and name do not match

CO-140 means: Patient/Insured health identification number and name do not match. The member ID and the name on the claim disagree with the payer’s record.

Read the group code before you act on this

140 is the claim adjustment reason code. The CO in front of it is the group code — a separate field the payer sets on the remittance. The same reason code arrives under different group codes depending on the payer and the situation, and the group code, not the reason code, decides who owes the money.

CO — contractual obligation. You write it off. You may not bill the patient.
PR — patient responsibility. Billable to the patient.
OA — other adjustment, and PI — payer initiated reduction. Neither is patient responsibility.

What causes it

A transposed digit in the member ID at registration
A married or maiden name mismatch against the payer file
The subscriber billed as the patient, or the reverse, on a dependent claim
Suffix handling — Jr, Sr or III present on one record and not the other

How to work it

Re-run eligibility and copy the name and ID exactly as the payer returns them, not as the patient wrote them on the form
On dependent claims, confirm the subscriber and patient fields are the right way round
Correct and resubmit — this is never an appeal

How to stop it recurring

Capturing the payer’s own spelling at eligibility rather than the patient’s handwriting removes almost all of these, and it costs nothing.

Who does this work

A eligibility & benefits verification seat at $1,700 per seat per month works this queue full time, during your business hours, inside your own system. Every call is logged with the payer reference number and the outcome, and every Friday you get it in writing.

What that seat does →

Codes worked the same way

CO-140 is corrected and resubmitted. So are these, which is why a queue sorted by recovery route moves faster than one sorted by code number — the same person, in the same system, with the same evidence to hand, clears all of them in one pass.

CO-16 — Claim lacks information
CO-4 — Modifier and code disagree
CO-11 — Diagnosis and procedure disagree
CO-5 — Wrong place of service
CO-9 — Diagnosis and age disagree
CO-10 — Diagnosis and gender disagree

Specialties that name this among their costliest

These are specialties whose own worst denials include one of this kind. The line under each is the denial they name, quoted from their page so you can see what the link is based on.

Pain Management
Bilateral procedures billed without the correct modifier
Anesthesia
Time units miscalculated from an incomplete anesthesia record
Orthopedics
Modifier 25 denied on an E/M billed the same day as a procedure
Behavioral Health
Telehealth denied for the wrong place-of-service or modifier
Gastroenterology
Screening colonoscopy converted to diagnostic without modifier PT or 33
Dermatology
Modifier 59 on multiple lesion removals rejected as unbundling

What leaving it costs

Working a denied claim costs $57.23 per denied claim in administrative time. Source. At 100 denials a month — an illustration, not a measurement of your practice — that is $5,723 a month, or $68,676 a year, in labour alone.

The figure that makes it worth spending: about 90% of initially denied claims are eventually paid. Source. The reason a denial sits is almost never that nobody knows how to work it — it is that nobody has the hours.

Questions

What does denial code CO-140 mean?

Patient/Insured health identification number and name do not match. In plain terms: The member ID and the name on the claim disagree with the payer’s record.

What causes CO-140?

A transposed digit in the member ID at registration. A married or maiden name mismatch against the payer file. The subscriber billed as the patient, or the reverse, on a dependent claim. Suffix handling — Jr, Sr or III present on one record and not the other.

How do you fix a CO-140 denial?

Re-run eligibility and copy the name and ID exactly as the payer returns them, not as the patient wrote them on the form. On dependent claims, confirm the subscriber and patient fields are the right way round. Correct and resubmit — this is never an appeal.

Can CO-140 be prevented?

Capturing the payer’s own spelling at eligibility rather than the patient’s handwriting removes almost all of these, and it costs nothing.

Is CO-140 the same as PR-140?

Same reason, different group code. The number 140 is the reason: The member ID and the name on the claim disagree with the payer’s record. The prefix says who carries the amount. CO means contractual obligation — the payer says the amount is not billable to anybody, and it is written off unless the denial itself is overturned. PR-140 is the same reason assigned to patient responsibility — the payer says the amount is owed by the patient, and it is billed to them. Read the prefix before the number: it decides whether you appeal, write off, or bill the patient.

What about the codes next to CO-140?

CO-139 and CO-141 are separate codes and this site does not yet cover them. The authoritative list is the X12 Claim Adjustment Reason Codes at x12.org/codes/claim-adjustment-reason-codes; a code is only described here once its official text, causes and fix have been written and checked.

Code descriptions are the standard X12 claim adjustment reason and remittance advice remark code text. Payer policies differ, and the payer’s own coverage policy governs any individual claim. This page is working guidance, not legal or clinical advice.

Last updated 2026-09-12. This is operational guidance drawn from payer remittance practice, not legal, coding or reimbursement advice. Payer-specific rules vary and change; confirm against the payer’s own policy before acting on a specific claim.

Written by Ibtesam Asif · Last reviewed 2026-09-12

Code descriptions are the standard published text. Everything after them is operational guidance from our own work, and payer policy governs any individual claim.

Other denial codes

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