Medicare Changes!
New MBI to be released 4/1/2018
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards.
This change will involve new identification numbers and new Medicare cards for all people with Medicare beginning in April 2018. Your patients will start to see new Health Insurance Claim Numbers (often called the “Medicare number”) on their new Medicare cards. The official term for this new number is the “Medicare Beneficiary Identifier” or “MBI.”
To align with this change, MedSoft’s Medicare Policy screens (at Registration and within the Patient Center) will reflect a field for “Subscriber MBI.” Please utilize this field for your patients’ MBI numbers.
Timeline for the Change
- CMS will begin mailing new cards in April 2018.
- All Medicare cards will be replaced by April 2019.
- Patients new to Medicare starting April 2018 and later will only have a card with the new MBI.
- There will be a transition period when you can use either the HICN or the MBI to exchange data and information with CMS. The transition period will start April 1, 2018, and run through December 31, 2019.
- On January 1, 2020, even for dates of services prior to this date, you must use MBIs for all transactions; there are very few exceptions when you can use either the HICN or MBI.
What do clinics need to do?
- Enter the new MBI into MedSoft when you see patients with the new cards (see screen shot below).
- Starting in June 2018, you can use your MAC’s secure portal to look up MBIs if your patients did not or could not bring in their new cards.
