Home Health & Hospice Week

If you operate in a “Wave 2” state, your patients should start receiving their new Medicare cards that include the new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier numbers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services “has started mailing new Medicare cards to people … who live in Wave 2 states and territories: Alaska, American Samoa, California, Guam, Hawaii, Northern Mariana Islands, and Oregon,” CMS says in an update. “We continue to mail new cards to people who live in Wave 1 states, as well as nationwide to people who are new to Medicare.”

Other important dates include June 1, when the the Railroad Retirement Board will mail the new Medicare cards to all people who get RRB benefits, nationwide; and Dec. 31, 2019, the last date providers can use either “the former Social Securitybased Health Insurance Claim Number or the new alpha-numeric” MBI.

And don’t forget, “once people with Medicare get their new Medicare cards, they can start using them right away,” CMS adds.