What is a contracted rate?
A contracted rate is the amount a payer agreed in its contract to pay a provider for a specific service code.
Commercial contracts often set rates as a percentage of a reference schedule (for example a percentage of Medicare), as flat amounts per code, or as a percentage of billed charges. The rate can depend on the date of service, place of service, modifiers and the clinician who performed the service.
Contracted rates are the baseline for measuring underpayments: what the contract says should be paid, compared with what the remittance shows was allowed.
How Vareo helps
Vareo checks every line of your 835 remittances against your payer contracts, finds underpayments like this, and handles the appeals and follow-up. You pay only a share of what is recovered.
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Last updated October 11, 2026