Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Starting in October 2018, new Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers (MBIs) will be returned on remittance advice from Medicare even if you sent the original claim with a valid and active Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) instead of an MBI. However, CMS will accept either the MBI or HICN for data exchanges through the transition period, which ends in January 2020.

Reminder: Last April, CMS commenced its new Medicare card initiative to replace Social Security Numbers on beneficiaries’ cards with the randomly selected, 11-character MBI to combat the rising issue of identity theft. The agency urges providers to use the new MBIs immediately when billing Medicare and to “use the transition period to make sure your systems can accept and transmit MBIs,” states CMS guidance.

Now: Medicare card mailings are underway for states that fall under Waves 5 and 6. CMS has finished mailing cards to people who live in Waves 1, 2, 3, and 4 states. Wave 7 is slated to begin this month.

End date: All new Medicare cards should be sent out by April 2019, according to the statutory deadline set by CMS; however, the agency suggests it might be done before this date. “Because card mailing is progressing so well, we updated the mailing schedule to include an approximate start date for the last wave, and we are on track to finish mailing new cards to all people with Medicare before April 2019,” according to Medicare officials.

See which states are in which waves and more mailing info at www.cms.gov/Medicare/New-Medicare-Card/NMC-Mailing-Strategy.pdf.