SPECIAL EDITION

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

New Medicare Card: Get Paid January 1, 2020 – Use MBIs Now

Do not wait. Update your patient’s records and use Medicare Beneficiary identifiers (MBIs) now, before you are busy with other patient insurance changes in January.

We encourage people with Medicare to carry their cards with them since we removed the Social Security Number-based number; if your patients do not bring their Medicare cards with them:

• Give them the Get Your New Medicare Card flyer in English ( (PDF)or Spanish) (PDF).
• Use your Medicare Administrative Contractor’s look-up tool. Sign up (PDF) for the Portal to use the tool.
• Check the remittance advice. Until December 2019, we return the MBI on the remittance advice for every claim with a valid and active Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN).

Starting January 1, you must use MBIs to bill Medicare regardless of the date of service:

• We will reject claims submitted with HICNs with a few exceptions
• We will reject all eligibility transactions submitted with HICNs

See the MLN Matters Article (PDF) for answers to your questions on using MBIs.

View this edition as a PDF (PDF)

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