How to switch your IDR filer without dropping a single deadline
Pilot on a slice of your claims. Keep in-flight disputes where they are. Decide on results.
Most groups that file No Surprises Act disputes through a law firm or IDR vendor are not shopping on price. They start looking when they cannot get a straight answer about their own claims. If that is where you are, this page covers what switching actually involves, and why it is less disruptive than the vendor whose contract you are reading would like you to believe.
What switching involves: disputes already in progress finish with whoever filed them. Only new filings move. Most filing agreements are not exclusive, so you can pilot a new filer on a defined slice of claims, one payer or one facility, while your incumbent keeps the rest. Your dispute history is in the federal public record, so you do not need your vendor's cooperation to benchmark it. The 90 calendar day cooling-off period after each decision is tracked per payer and service code, so a handoff done correctly drops nothing.
Why groups actually switch
The fee math matters, and we will get to it, but it is almost never the trigger. The groups that come to us from another filer describe the same three problems, in roughly the same words.
The black box
You send claims over every month, and some number of disputes comes back. Which claims were filed? Which were skipped, and why? Were they batched, or filed one at a time with a separate arbitration fee on each? When the filer is paid a percentage of what it wins, it has every reason to work the large, easy claims and quietly skip the rest. You see the wins. You do not see the claims that never made it into the portal, and nobody sends a report about those.
The silence
A dispute has deadlines on both sides: yours to file, the payer's to pay after a decision. When a billing manager asks where a dispute stands and gets nothing back for three weeks, that is not an annoyance, it is uncertainty about receivables you have already earned. Status should be a dashboard, not a favor.
The fee surprises
The percentage was the headline, but the agreement had more in it. Fees on amounts the payer later clawed back. Minimums per dispute. Charges for claims that settled in open negotiation before the arbiter ever saw them. If you have found yourself rereading an exhibit to figure out what you owe on a payment you may have to give back, you already know the problem with percentage pricing: the incentives only point the same direction as yours on the day the award lands.
The math, on your award sizes
Federal IDR awards are not small. The median decided dispute from 2023 through 2025 paid about 4.7 times the qualifying payment amount. Here is what a contingency fee takes from a single award at common rates.
| Award | At 15% | At 25% | At 35% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2,500 | $375 | $625 | $875 |
| $10,000 | $1,500 | $2,500 | $3,500 |
| $50,000 | $7,500 | $12,500 | $17,500 |
| $250,000 | $37,500 | $62,500 | $87,500 |
A flat fee per filing is the same number on every row of that table. It does not grow because your claims got bigger or your win rate improved. We quote it for your volume and mix on a 30 minute call, and the full fee structure is on the pricing page, including the government fees that apply no matter who files.
How a pilot works
- Pick a slice. One payer, one facility, or one month of new out-of-network claims. Your incumbent keeps everything else. Nothing gets terminated to start.
- We benchmark it first. The free audit runs your group against every decided dispute CMS has published, including your own filing record and, if you are curious, your current filer's record across all of its clients.
- We file the slice at a flat fee. Eligibility checked per claim, batches built to the 25 line cap (50 from November 1, 2026), deadlines and cooling-off windows tracked per payer and code.
- Compare and decide. After the first decisions land you will have awards, speed, and visibility side by side. Move the rest of the book, or do not. The pilot commits you to nothing.
What switching does not require
It does not require moving disputes that are already in progress; those finish with whoever filed them. It does not usually require ending your current agreement to start, since most are not exclusive, though it is worth checking yours for exclusivity language. It does not require your vendor's reports, because every decided dispute is in the CMS public use files and we can reconstruct your history from the public record. And it does not require a leap of faith on deadlines: the cooling-off rules that make mid-stream transitions feel risky are mechanical. After a decision, new disputes against the same payer for the same or similar codes wait out 90 calendar days, and claims whose windows fall inside that period can be filed in the 30 business days after it ends. Tracked in software, none of that is scary. Untracked, it is where claims go to die, under any filer.
The audit takes about 30 seconds of questions and includes your current filer's public record. No patient or claims data required.
Switching questions, answered
What happens to disputes already in progress?
They finish with whoever filed them, under the fee terms you agreed to for those disputes. Switching only changes where new filings go.
Can we run two filers at once?
Usually yes. Most agreements are not exclusive, and the portal does not care who files which dispute as long as each claim is filed once. That is what makes a slice pilot possible. Check your agreement first.
Will we lose our history if we leave?
No. Every decided dispute is in the CMS public use files. Your win rate, award sizes, and payer record are recoverable from the public record without your vendor's cooperation.
What is the 90-day cooling-off period?
After a decision, the initiating party waits 90 calendar days before filing against the same payer for the same or similar codes. Claims caught in that window can be filed in the 30 business days after it ends. A filer that does not track this forfeits claims silently.
What does Lido IDR charge?
A flat fee per filing, quoted for your volume on a 30 minute call. No percentage of the award, ever. The pricing page has the full breakdown, including the government fees.