New Medicare cards
In Practice
Rachna Chaudhari is the AAD's practice management manager. Her column offers tips in response to common member questions.
By Rachna Chaudhari, MPH, director of practice management, April 2, 2018
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced that it would be changing your patients’ Medicare cards to include a new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) and eliminate the traditional Social Security Number (SSN) – based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN).
What does this mean for your practice?
Starting in April, your office staff will begin seeing brand new Medicare cards from your Medicare patients. These cards will have 11 characters, the same as as the previous HICN, but they will be different characters. The characters will be created at random by CMS and not affiliated with the patient’s SSN, so your office staff will need to begin processing Medicare claims with this new number. You should also be aware that if you have patients who are related, they will now have individualized MBIs on their cards which won’t be affiliated with each other. CMS is allowing a transition period where you can continue submitting claims with the old HICN, however you must begin submitting claims with the new MBI by Jan. 1, 2020, to ensure your claim is not rejected.
Schedule to prepare
April 2018: Transition period begins
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Audit your current process for patient check-in to determine if any gaps exist for addressing this change. Train your front desk staff to ask all Medicare patients for their new MBI.
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Remind your patients to keep their new MBI secure and not share it with anyone besides health care providers.
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Patients will begin receiving their new Medicare cards with an MBI starting in April, so you want to make sure you are ready to automatically accept the new MBI from the electronic remittance advice (835) transaction in your claims.
May 2018: Begin processing the new MBI
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Patients will continue receiving their new MBIs until April 2019; continue asking all of your Medicare patients if they have received a new MBI and if so, update their information.
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Contact your practice management software vendor for any additional requirements.
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If you have a billing software vendor, contact them to determine if you need to change any of your reporting methods.
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Speak with clearinghouse to ensure they are also accepting all of your new MBIs.
October 2018: Look up missing MBIs
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For patients who have not communicated their new MBI, you can begin looking up this information in a CMS portal. Contact your local Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) for more information.
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Check your electronic remittance advice for your patient’s new MBI. It will be in the same location you currently see “changed HICN”: 835 Loop 2100, Segment NM1 (Corrected Patient/Insured Name), Field NM109 (Identification Code).
January 2020: Transition period ends
- You must submit all Medicare claims with the new MBI and cannot continue submitting claims with the HICN.
For additional information, visit www.cms.gov/newcard or email SSNRemoval@cms.hhs.gov.
