LA County SAPC lets SUD providers run their own EHR and submit 837 claim files to Sage as Secondary Users. Here is the annual conversion timeline — the January 31 request, 837 testing, and the 80% adjudication bar — and what the test files must prove.
If you run a Drug Medi-Cal provider in Los Angeles County and you are tired of living inside Sage, there is a sanctioned way out: become a Sage Secondary User. You keep your own EHR, and you submit 837P or 837I claim files to Sage built to SAPC's companion guides. The catch is that conversion happens on an annual clock with hard deadlines. Here is the timeline and what it takes to clear it. For the full market context, see the LA County SAPC Sage guide.
SAPC runs DMC-ODS for Los Angeles County on Sage, which sits on the ProviderConnect NX platform. As a Primary User, Sage is your EHR and your staff enter services directly into it. As a Secondary User, you run your own EHR — with your own documentation, group notes, and workflows — and you submit claims to Sage as 837 files. Same contract, same money, very different daily experience.
Conversion is a yearly window, and the dates are the part operators most often get wrong. Per SAPC's Sage provider communications, the sequence is:
| Deadline | What has to happen |
|---|---|
| By January 31 | Submit the official Primary-to-Secondary conversion request to SAPC |
| By March 31 | Begin EHR 837 testing in the TRAIN environment |
| By June 30 | Complete testing |
| During testing | Submit live-environment claims until you reach at least an 80% adjudication approval rate |
Miss the January 31 request and you generally wait a full year. Start the internal work early — the testing phase is where timelines slip. Confirm the current year's dates against SAPC's Sage provider communications before you plan around them.
The companion guides are not a formality; they are the acceptance test. Providers delivering Withdrawal Management 3.7 and 4.0 use the 837I companion guide; all other services use the 837P companion guide. Your test files have to demonstrate that your EHR produces the file in exactly the format Sage expects — correct client index numbers for DMC-enrolled clients, correct provider and service data, and clean structure — and that the files actually adjudicate. Testing continues until your agency reaches the 80% adjudication approval bar, at which point SAPC issues a Sage Secondary Provider certificate.
Most conversions stall for predictable reasons: starting the request late, underestimating the 837 formatting work, or treating testing as a one-and-done rather than an iterative push to 80%. The providers who convert cleanly do three things — they submit the request well before January 31, they have an EHR that already speaks the companion-guide format, and they treat the testing window as a sprint with named owners.
Navix is designed for the Sage Secondary User 837P/837I workflow. Your team documents the session once in Navix, and the billing file is built from that same record rather than a second round of data entry — and CollaborateMD, our RCM partner, processes the claims to Sage. We do not claim a certified Sage integration; the point is practical: keep one clinical record and produce the county-ready 837.
If you are planning your next conversion window, schedule a demo and we will walk the path from clinical documentation to the 837 file your agency submits to SAPC. For the recurring denial patterns to design around, read the most common SAPC claim denials and how to resolve them.
