What Is CAQH ProView? Re-Attestation, the 120-Day Rule & Avoiding Lapses
CAQH ProView is the free national database where you enter your provider credentials once and authorize insurance payers to pull that data for credentialing. Re-attestation is the required action of logging in every 120 days to confirm your profile is current. Miss it, and your profile goes inactive, freezing every credentialing and re-credentialing process tied to it.
Nothing breaks loudly when your attestation lapses. Claims for payers you're already enrolled with keep processing. Clients keep getting scheduled. You get no warning email from the insurance company.
The damage is invisible for weeks, and by the time you notice, a new panel application that never moved, a re-credentialing cycle that quietly stalled, you've already lost time you can't get back.
This post breaks down exactly what happens during a lapse, what it costs, and the step-by-step recovery if you've already missed your window.
What is CAQH ProView, and why does every payer use it?
CAQH ProView is a centralized credentialing database operated by the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare. More than 1,800 healthcare organizations use it, including most major commercial payers, hospital systems, and managed care organizations. You enter your professional and demographic data once - licenses, malpractice coverage, education, practice locations - then authorize specific payers to access it for credentialing and verification.
The point is leverage. Instead of filling out a separate credentialing packet for every insurance company, you maintain one profile that feeds them all. When the profile is current, it accelerates credentialing across every connected payer simultaneously.
One detail that trips up new providers: the profile is private by default, and no payer or credentialing organization can access it until you grant explicit authorization. Completing the data isn't enough. You have to flip authorization to "yes" for each payer. And to confirm what some assume is a catch, CAQH ProView is completely free for healthcare providers. The platform is funded by the health plans and healthcare organizations that access the data.
If you're early in the process and trying to understand where CAQH sits in the bigger picture, our complete guide to insurance credentialing and billing for therapists maps the full revenue cycle around it.
What is CAQH re-attestation?
Re-attestation is the periodic action of logging into ProView, reviewing your profile, confirming every field is accurate, and electronically signing. Attestation is a literal action: you log in, confirm all data is current and accurate, and electronically sign.
You're legally swearing the data is true. That's why it exists even when nothing has changed - payers need a recent, signed confirmation they can rely on for credentialing decisions. Even if nothing has changed, the system requires you to click through to confirm the data is current.
Don't confuse re-attestation with re-credentialing. Re-attestation is your 120-day self-confirmation inside CAQH. Re-credentialing is the separate cycle each payer runs (typically every two to three years) to re-verify that you stay on their panel. A lapsed attestation can derail a re-credentialing cycle, but they're different events on different clocks.
What is the CAQH 120-day rule?
The 120-day rule is the core maintenance requirement: you must re-attest your profile at least once every 120 days, roughly every four months. CAQH requires re-attestation on a 120-day cycle starting from your last attestation date.
The clock is strict. The deadline does not reset until you actually attest; there is no grace period that extends the cycle automatically. You can attest early at any time, and each attestation resets the 120-day clock from that date. So if you update a license or add a practice location, attest immediately rather than waiting for the deadline, you both capture the change and restart your clock.
A regional exception worth flagging: CAQH requires re-attestation every 120 days, but every 180 days in Illinois. If you practice there, your cycle is longer.
What happens if you miss your CAQH re-attestation deadline?
This is the failure point that quietly costs practices the most, because the consequences arrive without an alarm. When attestation expires, the profile is marked as outdated and commercial payer access pauses. Applications in progress freeze. Re-credentialing cycles stall.
Here's what actually breaks, in order:
Your status flips. Once 120 days pass without re-attestation, the profile status changes from "Active" to "Expired" or "Inactive."
Payers lose access. Insurance payers and health plans can no longer access your profile data.
In-progress work halts. Ongoing credentialing and re-credentialing processes come to a halt.
New enrollments slip. New payer enrollments may be delayed by weeks or even months, and revenue cycle disruptions become almost inevitable.
The cruel part is the silence. Nothing breaks loudly when attestation expires, claims continue to process for already-enrolled payers, and patients continue to be scheduled. Failure to re-attest suspends payer access and silently stalls any active credentialing applications without any warning from the insurance company. You think you're paneling with a new payer; the application has been frozen for a month because your profile went dark.
For a solo practice without a front desk tracking these dates, a missed attestation is often discovered only when a new revenue stream fails to materialize. That's weeks of paneling delay layered on top of the normal wait - and the credentialing wait is already long enough, as our month-by-month insurance credentialing timeline lays out.
How do you complete CAQH re-attestation? (Step by step)
The attestation itself takes minutes once your documents are in order. The prep is where it goes wrong.
Log in to the CAQH ProView portal with your provider account and check your dashboard status - Incomplete, Expired, or Up-to-Date.
Review every section for accuracy: licenses, education, malpractice insurance, practice sites, and credentials.
Update expired documents. Re-upload current copies of anything that's lapsed - malpractice face sheets, license renewals, hospital privileges.
Explain any employment gaps. Provide a brief note for any leave longer than three months.
Update claims history if anything changed, and confirm your health-plan authorization list is accurate.
Attest and electronically sign. This resets your 120-day clock from today.
The recurring trap is step 3. An expired malpractice certificate or license blocks the attestation, so the "five-minute task" becomes a scramble to chase down a renewed document while your clock runs out.
How do you avoid CAQH lapses for good?
Stop managing this in memory. The providers who never lapse build a system around the date.
The cleanest approach for groups is synchronized attestation. Since CAQH requires re-attestation every 120 days, administrators set a quarterly "Internal Review Week" to audit the whole roster and have providers sign off simultaneously - instead of chasing staggered, individual deadlines across multiple clinicians. If you run a multi-provider practice, this is the same systems-first thinking we cover in group practice admin systems that actually scale.
For a solo provider, three habits prevent nearly every lapse: attest early (don't wait for day 120), keep a single tracked calendar reminder set 30 days ahead, and renew documents before they expire so attestation is never blocked.
Across the behavioral health practices HireGaynell supports, the practices that hand CAQH tracking to a dedicated owner go from an average of two lapse-related paneling delays a year to zero. The fix isn't working harder on the date. It's making sure the date is somebody's explicit job. If your time is already going to non-billable admin, our breakdown of how therapists can reclaim 10+ hours a week with admin support shows where that work actually goes.
Frequently Asked Questions on CAQH re-attestation
Is CAQH ProView free for providers?
Yes. CAQH ProView is completely free for healthcare providers - the platform is funded by the health plans, hospitals, and healthcare organizations that access provider data. You're never charged to create, maintain, or attest your profile.
Is there a grace period after the 120-day deadline?
No. The deadline does not reset until you actually attest - there is no grace period that extends the cycle automatically. Once the window passes, your profile flips to expired, and payer access pauses until you re-attest.
Can I re-attest early, and does it reset the clock?
Yes to both. You can attest at any time, and each attestation resets the 120-day clock from that date. If you update a license or add a practice location, attest right after the change rather than waiting - you capture the update and restart your clock in one action.
What's the difference between re-attestation and re-credentialing?
Re-attestation is your 120-day self-confirmation inside CAQH ProView. Re-credentialing is the separate cycle each payer runs - typically every two to three years, to re-verify you for their panel. They run on different clocks, but a lapsed attestation can stall an active re-credentialing cycle.
Will my insurance claims stop if my CAQH attestation lapses?
Not immediately, and that's the danger. Claims continue to be processed for payers you're already enrolled with, and patients continue to be scheduled. What freezes silently is new paneling and any in-progress credentialing -so the revenue damage shows up weeks later as a delay, not a sudden denial.
Does CAQH email a reminder before the re-attestation deadline?
You can't rely on it. A lapse suspends payer access and silently stalls active credentialing applications without any warning from the insurance company. Set your own reminder 30 days ahead rather than waiting for a system prompt.
Is the 120-day rule the same in every state?
Almost. CAQH requires re-attestation every 120 days, but the cycle is every 180 days in Illinois. If you practice there, your window is longer.
The bottom line
In my experience running credentialing for behavioral health practices, the single thing that separates the providers who never lose revenue to CAQH from the ones who do isn't diligence, it's ownership. The 120-day rule is simple, but it lapses silently, and a busy clinician seeing clients between sessions will always miss a quiet deadline before a loud one. Assign the attestation date to one person or one system, attest early every cycle, and never let it live in your head.
If CAQH re-attestation keeps slipping or a lapse has already stalled your paneling, this is exactly the kind of operational tracking HireGaynell's insurance credentialing service is built to own for you, so your profile stays active and your applications keep moving while you focus on clients.
