Our cooling-off and open negotiation guide sets out the 30-business-day open negotiation period and the 4-business-day window that follows it for initiating the Federal Independent Dispute Resolution (IDR) process (45 CFR 149.510(b)(1)-(b)(2)). This page works through one synthetic, hypothetical calendar in full, because the rule runs on business days, and business days exclude both weekends and federal holidays: "the Departments clarify here that for the purposes of calculating Federal IDR process timelines, business days do not include Federal holidays and weekends" (91 FR 33949 at 306). This page states no outcome for any dispute and gives no advice on offers, amounts, or whether to negotiate.
Once the 30-business-day open negotiation period ends without an agreement, either party may initiate the Federal IDR process "during the 4-business-day period beginning on the first business day after the last day of the open negotiation period" (45 CFR 149.510(b)(2)(i)). A party that initiates after that 4-business-day window has closed has missed the initiation window under this provision (45 CFR 149.510(b)(2)(i)).
Assume, purely hypothetically, that a provider sends the open negotiation notice on a Monday, and the resulting 30-business-day open negotiation period happens to run through the week of the fourth Thursday in November -- Thanksgiving, a federal holiday, followed immediately by that Friday, which many workplaces treat as a normal business day even though it is not itself a federal holiday.
Suppose, in this hypothetical, that after excluding the Thanksgiving holiday and the two weekends that fall within the 30-business-day count, the open negotiation period's last business day lands on a Tuesday. The 4-business-day initiation window then begins on Wednesday -- "the first business day after the last day of the open negotiation period" (45 CFR 149.510(b)(2)(i)) -- and runs Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the following Monday, again skipping the intervening weekend. A notice of IDR initiation submitted on that Monday would fall on the fourth business day of the window and would be timely under this hypothetical's dates; a notice submitted the following Tuesday would fall on the fifth business day and would have missed the window as described in the rule.
This single hypothetical example required tracking one federal holiday, three separate weekends, and the distinction between a holiday that removes a day from the count and an office closure that does not. A calendar that assumes a holiday week behaves like a normal week -- or, in the other direction, that treats every day a business happens to be closed as excluded -- will produce a wrong initiation deadline. The Departments' own clarification (91 FR 33949 at 306) exists precisely because "business day" is not self-evident once a federal holiday falls inside a 30- or 4-business-day count.
This page does not state the initiation deadline for any actual dispute, does not identify which federal holidays apply in a given year beyond the illustrative Thanksgiving example above, and gives no view on the substance of any offer or negotiation. A party with an actual deadline calculation should confirm the current federal holiday calendar and count against its own dispute's actual notice date.
Trilatic is preparing an application to become a certified Federal IDR entity and is not accepting disputes. This guide states no outcome and gives no advice on offers or amounts. It is not legal advice. Published 2026-09-13; last checked against primary sources on 2026-09-13.
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