Educate your agency's patients about newly designed Medicare cards that contain the new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI).
 
CMS has started to mail out the newly designed cards. And health care providers should have staff understand what's happening so they can address patients' questions, health care consultant Duane Abbey of Iowa-based Abbey & Abbey Consultants said during an April 9 webinar.
 
Those people who enroll in Medicare for the first time will be among the first to get the cards, according to a CMS release.
 
Current beneficiaries will get new cards over the coming months, and through a transition period CMS will continue accepting the Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN).
 
"We’re working on making our processes even better so we’re using the highest levels of fraud protection when we mail new cards to current Medicare beneficiaries," CMS says in the release. "Over the next few weeks, we’ll be done with this additional work so we can mail new cards to current Medicare beneficiaries. We’re committed to mailing new cards to all Medicare beneficiaries over the next year."
 
There will be a transition where either number can be used from April 2018 through December 2019 (HHL 7/3/17). Note that from October 2018 through December 2019, “when a valid and active HICN is submitted on Medicare fee-for-service claims both the HICN and the MBI will be returned on the remittance advice,” CMS has said.
 
CMS expects to no longer accept HICNs as of January 2020. Exceptions to this can be found at http://go.cms.gov/2du7Eid.
 
Related link: View the latest CMS information on the new cards at https://www.cms.gov/medicare/new-medicare-card/nmc-home.html.