This page contains some common questions and answers about creating and using QLEs in the API.
Q. I have an employee with a pending end-date to send to Ideon, for this plan year. Their start date is very far in the past (several years). Would you still expect the original start date to be sent?
A. We would expect that original start date to persist, and for a new element end_date to be present on the member's QLE. Based on the scenario, this could be a termination of employment. In that case, we would also see a event termination_of_employment , end dates on all coverages, and likely a demographic update to show changes to their employment (end_date and status).
Q. How can I cancel coverage that was sent in error?
A. We recommend sending a Termination never effective event - see full details here: Termination Never Effective . In all cases, you would represent this as a QLE with the end date value one day before the start date - ex. "start_date": "2026-01-01", "end_date": "2025-12-31".
Q. What can I do if a member is associated with a new plan uuid in the middle of the plan year?
A. In the case of a valid plan change, you can send a new QLE with the new plan id and start date, without sending any end date for the older plan uuid.
We store an interim, implied end date for the old plan uuid, to record the assignment history.
Q. Last year, my member had coverages for 2 product lines. One product line ended mid-year. When I send coverages to Ideon, should I include that older product that ended?
A. In this case, omitting that old end-dated coverage is the prefered approach. Since the member doesn't have a coverage history in Ideon's system, there is no need to include the older coverage line. This allows us to transmit coverages to the carrier without hitting retroactive termination errors or omitting that coverage line ourselves.
Q. I'm sending a member to Ideon for the first time. They have current coverage but also elected coverage starting several months from now, on a future date. Should I include those future-dated coverages?
A. Our preferred approach to process these coverages, is to include any coverages that are active or will be active in the next 90 days. Most carriers do not allow us to process both those current and future elections at the same time, especially when they are more than 90 days into the future.
Generally, we would want to receive two QLEs if those are far-future start dates: One QLE with the active, current coverages, and then another appending those future coverages when they are near to their effective date.
