Home Health & Hospice Week

Now's the time to double check your NPPES information.

Just when it seemed like referring docs' NPIs would be at your fingertips, it turns out you'll be making do for a little longer.

Delay: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had planned to give you access to the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) database at the end of June. This would have allowed you to look up your referring physicians' National Provider Identifier numbers, or just download the whole database.

New deadline: But now CMS is delaying your access to this information until Aug. 1.

The reason: CMS is concerned that you might need more time to look up your information in the NPPES database.

You should make sure to delete any information you wouldn't want the public to be able to view and make any updates. CMS will soon announce the deadline to make changes you want included in the downloadable file.

CMS says it understands providers have an "urgent need" for this data. But at the same time, CMS wants to make sure the data is as accurate as possible.

You can find out more information, including a list of the data elements that will be publicly disclosed, online at www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalProvIdentStand/06a_DataDissemination.asp.

In other NPI news: CMS came up with a crosswalk between NPIs and legacy ID numbers to help validate NPIs. In Transmittal 1262 (CR 5649), CMS tells Medicare contractors to contact at least 10 to 15 providers per week to verify NPI information. The contractors should start out with the providers that have the highest volume of rejected claims due to invalid NPI information, and the providers that aren't submitting NPIs.