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Payer routing · Aetna

Aetna keeps behavioral
health in-house.

For once the card tells the truth. Aetna administers its own behavioral benefit, so eligibility and behavioral both sit on Availity. The complication is everything Aetna-adjacent: Meritain, Allied, Allegiance and Angle.

See the routing table → Provider lines
The short answer

For Aetna commercial and Aetna Medicare plans there is no behavioral carve-out. Eligibility and the behavioral benefit are both verified on Availity Essentials, and the number on the member’s card reaches behavioral health directly, staffed around the clock.

That simplicity does not extend to the Aetna-adjacent plans. Meritain is Aetna-owned and is not on Availity. Allied, Allegiance and Angle Health each run their own portal, and none of them publishes a behavioral administrator. On those, the card is the routing instruction and a general Aetna line will not help you.

The routing table

One portal, then four exceptions.

The Aetna plans proper are the easiest verification in behavioral health. The self-funded plans administered under or alongside Aetna are among the hardest, precisely because they look like Aetna on the card.

Plan familyStep 1 · eligibilityStep 2 · behavioralWhat to watch
Aetna proper
Aetna Health Plan, commercial and HMO Availity Essentials Availity, in-house No carve-out. Confirm network tier and whether the product is HMO, which has its own service line.
Aetna Medicare Availity Essentials Availity, in-house Advantage plans still carry authorization and limit rules. Check them even though the portal is the same.
Aetna-adjacent, self-funded
Meritain Health account.meritain.com Not published, varies by group Aetna-owned but not on Availity. Confirm network tier 1 versus tier 2 on the call; the tiers pay very differently.
Allied Benefit Systems portal.alliedbenefit.com Not published, varies by group No published provider line at all. The card is the only reliable route, and numbers found by search are usually wrong.
Allegiance Card first Not published Employer groups run their own service teams, and network questions can land with a different carrier entirely.
Angle Health provider.anglehealth.com Not confirmed Registration requires TIN, NPI and supporting detail, so set access up before you need it rather than the morning of.

Portal URLs: Availity Essentials apps.availity.com · Meritain account.meritain.com · Allied Benefit Systems portal.alliedbenefit.com · Angle Health provider.anglehealth.com

Where Aetna claims go wrong

The absence of a carve-out is not the absence of rules.

Assuming Meritain behaves like Aetna
It carries Aetna branding, it is Aetna-owned, and it is not on Availity. A practice that verifies Meritain the way it verifies Aetna gets nothing, then assumes a coverage problem. Meritain is its own portal, its own network tiers and its own answer, and the tier matters: tier 1 and tier 2 pay materially differently for the same session.
Trusting a phone number you found by searching
For Allied, Allegiance and the smaller self-funded administrators, the numbers that surface in search results are frequently member lines, sales lines, or defunct. The card is authoritative. Where a practice has no card image, that is a reason to ask the front desk for one rather than to guess.
Treating in-house as automatically in-network
No carve-out means one portal, not automatic participation. Behavioral network status still has to be confirmed for the rendering clinician and the specific product, and HMO products in particular can differ from the commercial answer on the same practice.
Provider lines

The numbers that actually reach a person.

Provider lines only. For Aetna proper the behavioral line is on the member’s card and runs 24/7; for everything Aetna-adjacent, the card is the only number worth dialing.

Aetna
888-632-3862
Provider services. The behavioral line is the number printed on the member’s card and is staffed 24/7.
Aetna · HMO and Medicare Advantage
800-624-0756
Separate line for HMO and Advantage products. Mon–Fri, 8am–5pm.
Meritain Health
800-566-9311
Automated 24/7. A live representative needs the member’s card number, so have the card before you dial.
Allegiance
800-877-1122
Employer groups have their own service teams, and network questions may be routed to a different carrier.
Angle Health
855-937-1811
Mon–Fri, 8am–7pm ET. Provider email: providers@anglehealth.com.
Allied Benefit Systems
Call the card
No published provider line. Mon–Fri, 8am–8pm CT through the number on the card. Do not trust numbers found by search.
Before you dial

What to have in front of you.

The card, both sides
Front and back, as an image. On self-funded and third-party administered plans, the back of the card is often the only reliable routing information that exists.
Your NPI and tax ID, and the rendering clinician’s NPI
Behavioral network status is answered per clinician, not per practice. Asking about the group gets you an answer that may not apply to the person actually seeing the patient.
The CPT code and the date of service
Cost share, limits and authorization rules differ by service. Verify for the date of service, not for today, and for telehealth confirm both coverage and the expected place-of-service code.
A transaction or reference number, if the portal issued one
Some portals dead-end a call without it. And when a payer issues none at all, record that explicitly rather than leaving the field empty, so a later reader can tell the difference between “none exists” and “nobody checked.”

Verified 13 August 2026. Payer phone trees, portal names and carve-out arrangements change without notice, and self-funded groups can change administrators at renewal. Treat this as a starting point rather than an authority: confirm against the member’s card and the portal on the date of service. Product and company names are the property of their respective owners and appear here for identification only; no affiliation or endorsement is implied.

Elsewhere in the library

Other payer families.

UnitedHealthcare
UnitedHealthcare & Optum
Provider Express for almost everything, with four exceptions.
Cigna & Evernorth
Cigna & Evernorth
One carve-out, no exceptions, and a batch route most practices miss.
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Blue Cross Blue Shield
The alpha prefix decides everything, not the logo.

See the whole payer routing library →

Or hand the
routing to us.

We keep this map current across every payer family and run it against your whole upcoming schedule, before the patient walks in, inside the EHR you already use.

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