SPECIAL EDITION
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
New Medicare Card Mailing Completed
CMS finished mailing new Medicare cards to people with Medicare across all mailing waves (PDF), including Wave 7 states and territories and also to people with Medicare Parts A&B who live in Canada and Mexico.
Medicare patients are using their new cards in doctor’s offices and other health care facilities. For the week ending January 11, 2019, fee-for-service health care providers submitted 58% of claims with the new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI), showing that many of you are already successfully submitting claims with MBIs. While you can continue using the former Social Security Number-based Health Insurance Claim Numbers during the transition period, we encourage you to use the new MBIs for all Medicare transactions.
To ensure that you have access to your patients’ new numbers, you can individually look up MBIs if you have access to your Medicare Administrative Contractor's secure provider portal (PDF). Likewise, your patients can access their new Medicare numbers or print official cards within their secure MyMedicare.gov accounts.
If your Medicare patients say they did not get a card, instruct them to:
- Look for unopened mail. We mailed new Medicare cards in a plain white envelope from the Department of Health and Human Services.
- Sign into MyMedicare.gov to get their new numbers or print official cards. They need to create an account if they do not already have one.
- Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), so we can help them get their new cards.
- Continue to use their current cards to get health care services. They can use their old cards until December 31, 2019.
View this edition as PDF (PDF)
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