Prior Authorizations Managed by a Third-Party Processor

some pbm/payers use a third party processor to manage all, or a portion of their prior authorization processing if this is the case, the pbm/payer will return a response with a reason code indicating that they do not process pas for the patient/medication combination (reason code cp) or that they do not process pas for the patient (reason code co) surescripts is able to perform a search for the third party processor if one of these two reason codes are returned if a processor is found, surescripts will send a painitiationrequest on behalf of the provider vendor for the user the response that is received from the third party processor will be returned to the user in the same manner that a response from a pbm/payer would be returned in the event that the third party processor does not support epa or surescripts is unable to find a third party processor, the user will receive a painitiationresponse indicating that reviewing prior auth notes from multiple entities pbm/payers, third party processor and surescripts may include additional free text details with their epa responses users can review the details to determine the most appropriate or required action for an epa by referring to these pa notes each message will have its own designated area for notes on subsequent responses for the same prior authorization (if the original pbm/payer was not the processor or does not support epa), users can go to the process details from the task history or use the task history link from within the task details screen selecting the view option next to pa notes will bring up a chronological view of all pa notes received in response to the selected prior authorization