New Medicare Beneficiary Identifier

As most of us have already heard, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been mailing out new Medicare cards since April 2018 and 3 of their 7 mailing waves have been completed according to the CMS mailing strategy publication. These new cards will no longer have the patient's social security number (SSN) on it and will instead have a new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI).

Starting in October 2018, you will be able to bill claims under the patient's Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN), which included the patient's SSN, or their new MBI. Either ID number will be acceptable from October 2018 through December 31, 2019, after which the patient's MBI will be the only acceptable ID number.

There are 3 ways to obtain the new MBI: get it from your patient, use your Medicare Administrative Contractor's (MAC) provider portal or check your remittance advice (from October 2018 through December 2019 both HICN and MBI will be returned on every remittance).

Here are some tips to follow when updating the HICN to the MBI:

1. MBI may include numbers 0-9

2. MBI only uses uppercase letters

3. MBI will not use letters S, L, O, I, B or Z

These changes will also affect the Railroad Retirement Board as they will be mailing out new cards as well.

#Medicare #NewMedicareCard #MedicalBilling #Insurance

Source: MLN Matters number SE18006