Billing Medicare with the Updated Rules
Most Americans know that SSN is an abbreviation for Social Security Number — the identifier that has been used for everything we do in the United States. However, Medicare has given a new way for Medicare patients to protect their identity and using a Social Security number will not longer be accepted. You will need to double check every Medicare Patients card to find their new number, which stands for Medicare Beneficiary Identifier — a term born from MACRA and the Social Security Number Removal Initiative (SSNRI).
MACRA requires CMS to replace SSN-based Health Insurance Claim Numbers (HICNs) for MBIs on all Medicare cards by April 2019. The MBIs, which will consist of 11 randomly-generated characters (numbers and uppercase letters), will be used for Medicare transactions such as billing, eligibility status, and claim status.
As with SSNs, each MBI is confidential and providers will need to safeguard these numbers, just as they do all protected health information.
CMS has started to update cards in April 2018 so for the New Year make sure you ask each patient for the card they have and update that into your system. In order to work with providers CMS did give providers from April 1, 29018 – December 31, 2019. Well the deadline has passes and if you are not updating you will not receive payment. Yes this will be another job, however, you should be updating all insurance on every visit.
Changes happen all the time, and why would you leave money on the table?
https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/New-Medicare-Card/Understanding-the-MBI-with-Format.pdf