Which companies administer behavioral health carve-outs?

Five administrators account for most behavioral carve-outs in the United States. Optum, through Provider Express, holds the UnitedHealthcare family. Evernorth holds Cigna. Carelon Behavioral Health holds Anthem members and a range of managed plans. Lucet, formerly New Directions, holds Florida Blue. Magellan holds a set of employer and public-sector plans. Aetna is the significant exception, administering behavioral health in-house.

Does being in-network with a carrier make you in-network with its behavioral vendor?

No. Credentialing with the medical carrier and credentialing with the behavioral administrator are separate processes, and practices are frequently participating in one and not the other. The medical portal will report in-network status for the medical contract, and the behavioral claim will still be adjudicated out-of-network. Behavioral network status has to be confirmed with the administrator, for the rendering clinician and the specific product line.

How do practices get access to a behavioral health portal?

Each administrator registers practices separately, under the practice's own tax ID and NPI; access does not carry over from the medical carrier. Optum, Evernorth, Magellan and Lucet register directly, while Carelon is reachable through Availity under payer ID BHOVO. Several verify credentials before granting access and can take days, so registration is worth completing before a plan appears on the schedule.

Who sets prior authorization requirements on a carved-out plan?

The behavioral administrator, not the medical carrier. This is why a carrier representative can accurately say no authorization is required while the behavioral vendor requires one: they are describing different benefits. Authorization, concurrent review and visit limits all have to be confirmed with the entity that will adjudicate the behavioral claim.

Payer routing · Carve-out administrators

The five companies
behind the cards.

Almost every behavioral carve-out in the country lands at one of five administrators. Learn these and most routing questions answer themselves: you are no longer asking who pays, only which of the five this particular plan uses.

See the routing table → Provider lines

The short answer

Optum holds the UnitedHealthcare family. Evernorth holds Cigna. Carelon holds Anthem and a range of managed plans. Lucet holds Florida Blue. Magellan holds a set of employer and public-sector plans. Aetna is the notable exception that keeps behavioral health in-house.

Access is the part that catches new practices out. Each vendor registers practices separately, under your own tax ID and NPI, and several take days rather than minutes. Set up access before you need it: registration discovered on the morning of an appointment is registration that will not be ready in time.

The routing table

Five vendors, five registrations.

Two of these are reached through Availity, and three are direct registrations. None of them inherits access from the medical carrier, which is the assumption that most often leaves a practice locked out on the day it matters.

Administrator	Portal	Whose plans it holds	How access works
Optum · Provider Express	providerexpress.com	Behavioral for the whole UnitedHealthcare family, including most UMR and Shared Services groups	Register directly under your practice tax ID.
Evernorth	provider.evernorth.com	Behavioral for all Cigna plans, commercial and Medicare	Self-register. A batch coverage grid is available by email for volume checks.
Carelon Behavioral Health	providerportal.carelonbehavioralhealth.com	Anthem members and a range of managed and public-sector plans	Reachable through Availity under payer ID BHOVO, or directly.
Magellan	magellanprovider.com	Employer and public-sector behavioral plans	Register directly. No general provider line published in our records; use the portal.
Lucet	webpass.ndbh.com	Behavioral for Florida Blue, commercial and Medicare Advantage	Register with Lucet directly. Formerly New Directions Behavioral Health.

Also: Availity Essentials apps.availity.com is the front door for Carelon (payer ID BHOVO) and for several medical eligibility checks that precede a behavioral lookup. Lucet provider portal providerportal.lucethealth.com.

What practices get wrong about vendors

Being in-network twice is not the same as being in-network.

A contract with the carrier is not a contract with the vendor

Practices are routinely credentialed with UnitedHealthcare and not with Optum, or with Anthem and not with Carelon. The medical portal shows in-network, the claim is denied out-of-network, and the patient receives a bill nobody predicted. Network status has to be confirmed with the vendor that adjudicates the behavioral claim, per clinician, per product line.

Authorization rules belong to the vendor, not the carrier

Prior authorization, concurrent review and visit limits are set by the behavioral administrator. A carrier representative can, in good faith, tell you no authorization is required, because none is required for the medical benefit they are looking at. The vendor is the only source that governs.

Registration takes longer than the schedule allows

Several of these vendors verify tax ID, NPI and sometimes a signed agreement before granting portal access, and a few days is normal. The failure mode is predictable: a new payer appears on next week’s schedule, registration starts that morning, and the appointment happens unverified.

Provider lines

The numbers that actually reach a person.

Provider lines only. Where a vendor publishes no general provider line, the portal is the route and the member’s card is the fallback.

Optum · Provider Express

877-614-0484

Mon–Fri, 7am–7pm CT. Behavioral line for the UnitedHealthcare family. Portal technical support 866-209-9320.

Evernorth Behavioral

800-926-2273

Behavioral provider service center for all Cigna plans. Batch checks: EBHCoverageConfirmation@Evernorth.com.

Carelon Behavioral Health

800-397-1630

Mon–Fri, 8am–8pm ET. Claims 800-888-3944. Availity payer ID BHOVO.

Lucet

877-709-6822

Provider support and WebPass access. Case management 866-350-2280. Substance use 877-326-2458, 24/7. Network operations 888-611-6285.

Magellan

Portal

No general provider line in our records. Work through magellanprovider.com, or the number printed on the member’s card.

Availity support

800-282-4548

Mon–Fri, 8am–8pm ET. For Carelon access under payer ID BHOVO and portal problems generally.

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

One carve-out, no exceptions, and a batch route most practices miss.

Aetna

No carve-out at all, which creates a different problem.

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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The five companiesbehind the cards.