MBI Required for Medicare Patients as of January 1, 2020

     For our Medicare providers, as of January 1, 2020 you MUST report the new MBI (Medicare Beneficiary Identifier) for your Medicare patients.  The date of service is irrelevant.  Even if services took place in 2019 you must report using the MBI.

     A number of our clients have not provided us MBI numbers for all of your Medicare patients.  Remember, ALL of your Medicare patients have their new MBI cards by now.

     When this requirement becomes effective, it will be your office's responsibility to ensure that you have provided us the MBI number for your patients.  We will NOT be checking every patient to ensure we have an MBI number on file.

     If you are not sure if you have provided MBIs for us, do NOT submit a ticket requesting if we have an MBI on file.  Instead, we can provide you a report of all of your Medicare patients with their demographic info, including ID # ($5.95 fee for this report).  You can then use this report to review and for those patients where we do not have MBIs listed you can then submit a ticket (do NOT send a regular email) with the new MBI numbers.

     NEW MBI LOOK-UP SERVICE:  Don't have time to look up MBI numbers for your patients.  We will be offering an MBI Look-up Service.  For $4.95 per patient we will research and obtain the patient's new MBI.  For this we must have the patient's name, DOB and Social Security number.  For most Medicare patients we already have this info on file.

     If you do want us looking up MBIs for any of your patients, you must submit a support ticket, request the MBI Look-up Service and list the names of the patients.  If for any reason we cannot obtain an MBI (for example, we do not have the patient's SS number), you will be notified.

     If you see patients in a nursing home, it is your responsibility to ensure you obtain updated face sheets with the MBI number listed from the Business Office of the nursing home.  Again, we can look up MBIs if you request us to do so.

     If you do not provide an MBI to us OR request that we look up the MBI, the claim will reject (presumably on an EOB) in 2020.  When it rejects a ticket will be created in the Support Suite and you will be notified to provide us the MBI for the patient so we can rebill.

     Beginning in 2020 for any offices that submit a patient form and list an old Medicare number rather than an MBI you will be instructed to submit a new patient form and enter the patient's MBI number.  For any practices that see patients in nursing homes and in 2020 provide face sheets with an old Medicare number you will be instructed to submit an updated face sheet with the patient's MBI number.

Make sure claims don't reject by acting now.  If you want us to provide you a report of all Medicare patients we have on file for you to review, simply send us an email asking for a Medicare patient report.

Thanks,

Steve