Home Health & Hospice Week

If you’re not yet using the new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier numbers contained on your patients’ new Medicare cards, you’re behind the curve.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services trumpets the fact that it “sent new cards to more than 61 million people with Medicare across all U.S. states and territories, completing the mailing ahead of schedule,” according to a new release. The original deadline for sending the new cards was April 2019, after starting in April 2018.

Technically, providers do have until Dec. 31 to switch over to using the new MBIs instead of the old Social Security Number-based Health Insurance Card Numbers, CMS allows. But “safeguarding our beneficiaries’ personal information continues to be one of our top priorities,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma says in the release. The Trump Administration expedited the issuance of the new MBI cards “to ensure the protection of Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayer dollars from the potential for fraud and abuse due to personal information that existed on the old cards.”

Verma adds, “These new cards will not only be easier for beneficiaries, but also provide the Medicare program with essential protections due to the new unique identifier on the cards.”

In fact, “more than half of healthcare claims CMS is processing now include the new MBI, demonstrating a smooth transition to the new cards,” CMS notes. “Healthcare providers submitted 58 percent of all Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) claims with an MBI for the week ending January 11th.”

If your patients claim not to have received a new Medicare card and number, direct them to 1-800-MEDICARE or the MyMedicare.gov website to request a replacement. And you can give them their new number that you look up.