SPARCS Submission Deadlines: The 60-Day and 180-Day Rules, Month by Month

By Two Pillars & Co Advisory Group · Sources checked October 2026

What are the SPARCS submission deadlines?

SPARCS, the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System, is New York’s all-payer system for patient-level hospital and outpatient data. Facilities that are required to report send their records to the Department of Health every month. That is the part most compliance teams know well. What is less obvious is that sending a month’s data once does not close out that month. Each month of discharges and visits carries two later checkpoints that decide whether the facility is in compliance.

The rules are written into Title 10 of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations, Section 400.18, and the Department summarizes them in its Data Submission Compliance Protocol and on its exception and extension request form.^[1][2] Both documents say the same thing: facilities must submit data for all inpatient discharges and outpatient visits on a monthly basis, at least 95 percent of a facility’s total data must be in within 60 days from the end of the month of the discharge or visit, and 100 percent must be in within 180 days from the end of that month.^[1][2]

In plain terms, think of every service month as having a first deadline about two months later and a final deadline about six months later. A facility that submits promptly and reconciles carefully rarely notices either one. A facility that lets rejected records pile up can find that the first deadline has passed without anyone realizing it.

How does the 60-day, 95 percent benchmark work?

The 60-day benchmark is about completeness early on. By the end of the second month after a service month, the Department expects almost all of that month’s records to have been submitted and accepted. The 95 percent figure refers to the facility’s total data for that period, not to any single file.^[1]

The reason for a benchmark this early is practical. Many problems with SPARCS data, such as a vendor interface that stopped sending one claim type, show up within weeks. A benchmark at two months gives the program, and the facility, a chance to catch them while the records are still fresh.

It is worth remembering that “submitted” and “accepted” are different. A record the portal rejects does not count toward compliance until it is corrected and accepted. The Department’s July 2026 submitter forum stressed that discrepancies in volume are almost always due to rejected records, or newly accepted records not yet shown in the weekly dashboard.^[3] That is why many teams treat the 60-day date as a date by which rejections should already be cleared, not simply a date by which files should have been sent.

What is the 180-day, 100 percent deadline?

The 180-day deadline is the final one. Within about six months of the end of the service month, the Department expects every record for that month. This is the deadline that carries consequences: the protocol describes the 180 days as being made up of a reporting period and a reconciliation period, and says that a facility that has not achieved compliance after the 180 days is deemed out of compliance, which begins a process of warning notices, a Statement of Deficiency and a Plan of Correction.^[1]

The second half of that window, the reconciliation period, is meant for comparing what the facility’s own systems say were discharged with what SPARCS actually accepted, correcting anything that was rejected and resubmitting. A separate article in this series walks through that calendar and the notices in detail. For deadlines, the key point is that reconciliation has to be finished inside the 180 days, not started after them.

The July 2026 forum gave a concrete example of the annual cycle. All calendar year 2025 discharge and visit records were due by June 30, 2026, the 100 percent deadline for December 2025 service dates.^[3]

What does the month-by-month SPARCS schedule look like?

The compliance protocol publishes a table showing, for each month of discharge or visit, the calendar month in which the 95 percent and 100 percent deadlines fall.^[1] It is reproduced below so that a team can post it where staff will see it.

The protocol’s own example reads the table the same way: 95 percent of all service dates in January are due in March, with 100 percent required in July.^[1] Note that the table lists months, not days. The protocol does not publish an exact day or a time of day for each deadline, so a facility that needs to know whether a specific date is inside a deadline should ask the SPARCS program through its compliance ticketing system.^[4]

Who is responsible when a vendor submits the data?

Many facilities use a vendor or a clearinghouse to prepare and send their SPARCS files. The protocol allows this, but it is explicit about responsibility: facilities may contract with vendors to submit on their behalf, but the facility remains ultimately responsible for timely, complete and accurate submission.^[1]

This has two practical consequences. First, the facility’s SPARCS Coordinator, not the vendor, is the person the program holds accountable for the deadlines. Second, the facility needs its own way to confirm that records were accepted, because a vendor’s report that “the file was sent” does not show that the records were accepted. The Department’s weekly audit reports, covered in another article in this series, are the independent check.^[3]

How can a team keep track of SPARCS deadlines?

The simplest approach is a one-page calendar built from the table above, with each service month listed alongside its two dates. Add three columns: records generated in your own system for that month, records accepted by SPARCS, and the difference. Review it weekly, after the Department refreshes its dashboards on Monday afternoons,^[3] and investigate any gap larger than a normal day’s activity.

It also helps to name an owner for each step. One person confirms the monthly submission went out, another checks the next day that records were accepted, and the Coordinator reviews the reconciliation each quarter. The point of the calendar is not bureaucracy. It is to make the first deadline visible long before it arrives, so that a rejected-record problem is fixed in week three instead of month six.

If something outside the facility’s control threatens a deadline, such as a system outage or a long service suspension, the Department allows facilities to request an extension or an exception, with specific information and ahead of the monthly compliance report. That process is described in a companion article.^[2]

Frequently asked questions

What to do next

1. Build a one-page calendar from the Department’s schedule and post it for your team.
2. Check the weekly audit report and compare it with your own counts of discharges and visits.
3. Correct and resubmit rejected records as soon as they appear.
4. Make sure your SPARCS Coordinator and backup are current, and confirm who watches for notices.