CMS has approved Monday, October 21 as a dark day, if necessary for National Government Services (NGS) JK systems, which will also not be available on Saturday, Oct. 19 and Sunday Oct. 20, NGS has announced. On dark days, Medicare online systems are not available for internal or external use. This affects the availability of claims processing and payments, electronic data interchange transactions, the Provider Contact Center and the interactive voice response system.
 
The potential dark day has been scheduled because the Medicare Part A workload will be transitioned from NHIC, Corp. Medicare to the new NGS Jurisdiction K (JK) A/B MAC.
 
NGS will issue updates on how the dark day may affect the Part A providers—Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Rhode Island.