New Medicare ID Cards Reminder

As a reminder, Medicare will begin mailing new ID cards this April. Our previous posting on this topic is copied below:

Medicare is finally enacting a longtime goal to remove social security numbers from their patient ID cards. Start- ing in April 2018, Medicare will be sending new cards to their patients. The new IDs, known officially as Medi- care Beneficiary Identifiers (MBI), will include 11 characters with a mixture of letters and numbers (see below fact sheet). If dashes are shown on the cards, do not report them in your software.

Per Medicare, the new numbers should be accessible via local contractor websites (Connex) starting in June 2018. However, begin asking your patients for new copies next April. Medicare also announced a long transition period during which either old or new numbers can be used on claim forms. The transition period will last from April 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019.