Cocoon requests to be added as an authorized representative to your online short-term disability (STD) provider portal. Cocoon requires this information in order to verify claims filed were received by the provider, and view payments and important notices requiring action on a claim.

How to provide Cocoon Authorized Representative or Third-party Access (TPA)

Although each STD provider portal is different, the process for adding Cocoon as an authorized representative to your account is very similar across all providers.

For examples of current providers where Cocoon has step-by-step instructions on how to be added as an authorized representative, please refer to the following:

Even if your STD Provider is not listed above, it may be helpful to view these screenshots to gain a better understanding of how access may be provided through your carrier.

Step 1: Adding a user

Once logged in as an administrator, you should have access to add additional users to your account under a user management tool. Roles that might be displayed for you to select include TPA (third-party access), benefits coordinator, or authorized representative. The role is important only if certain functionality is applicable only to that role (please refer to Step 3 for reference to the types of functionality that Cocoon requires to support claims for your employees). Otherwise, only a single role may be available based on the naming convention your provider uses.

Once you have determined the correct role, or selected the role available to create, the information you'll need to get Cocoon added is as follows:

Step 2: Select Policies Cocoon should have access too

Cocoon will always need access to your general short-term disability policy, which is the policy that employees are either automatically enrolled in, or self-enroll in once they join your company, regardless of where they are located.

New York and Hawaii

If your general short-term disability provider is also the provider for state-specific disability and paid family leave programs (such as New York, Hawaii), you will want to make sure that this role has visibility to those policies as well. There should be the option to select which policies the user should have access to if more than one policy is managed by the provider. Please be sure to provide access to all policies that Cocoon will be responsible for surfacing to your employees.

Step 3: Add the functionality this user should have access to

When completing the new user profile for Cocoon, you should have the option to select what functionality the user should have access to. In order to facilitate claims and claim payments for your employees, please be sure to include the following:

Some providers have a wide variety of functions a user might be able to use, while others are limited. When selecting functions, it is important to consider what Cocoon uses this access to do on behalf of your employees during their leave.

What Cocoon users STD Access For:

Cocoon uses authorized access to your account in order to facilitate claims for your employees. This might include the following:

What Cocoon encourages users and employers to use their STD portal for:

As disability claims involve sensitive medical information, providers will not speak to Cocoon directly regarding the status or decisioning of a claim and will only speak with the employee directly. Therefore, Cocoon encourages employees to create their own user accounts with the benefit provider, which allows them to view the status of their claim, see if any payments have been issued, or respond to any required actions from the private carrier.

As an employer, you would have the same access as Cocoon, which also allows you to see the status of your employee claims and view benefit payments and notices issued.

What happens next?

Once Cocoon has been added as a user, we should receive an account activation email allowing us to create a username and password to access the account you have provisioned for us.

If we do not receive this email, we will follow up with your team directly. Unfortunately, even if you created an account for us but we did not receive the email we are unable to reach out to the provider directly as they will inform us that only the account owner will be able to add users.

Similarly, if you work with a benefits broker for your STD policies, you will need to coordinate access with them directly as they will typically divert Cocoon back to you as the employer for access and authorization on the account.

Managing Access to your account

Although authorized access is requested during onboarding and required before going live with Cocoon, we may lose access to the account for unforeseen circumstances and may reach out to you to help regain access.

What happens if Cocoon is unable to gain access

If Cocoon is unable to gain access to your short-term disability account, Cocoon will be unable to facilitate claims beyond any initial filing we assisted with. This will mean employees who have questions regarding their claims will need to proactively create an account with the disability provider to view status and payment information. Users will also have to notify Cocoon if there are any notices or requests for additional information on a claim. These notices are often extremely time sensitive and inability to action them timely may result in a claim denial.

Cocoon will also be unable to see if any payments have been issued for an employee's claim. Cocoon typically relies on an employee to self-report all benefit payments, however, in the instance where the employee does not self report and Cocoon has access to your STD provider portal, we will be regularly checking for payments and will log them in Cocoon on behalf of your employee in order to reconcile payroll.