Medicare begins mailing new Medicare cards in April 2018 and expects all Medicare patients to have a new card by April 2019.
Patients’ current Medicare ID numbers (HICN) are based on the beneficiaries’ Social Security numbers. All HICN ID’s will be replaced with a new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI). Each MBI is 11 characters in length and contains numbers and uppercase letters.
We recommend you post this notice in your practice for your Medicare Patients.
Within your RAPID software, scan and upload the new ID card to patient documents and then create a new Medicare policy for each new MIB card beneficiary. We recommend you retain, not delete, the patient’s existing Medicare payer information for history purposes.
Medicare permits submission of claims using either the HICN or MBI during the transitional period from April 2018 to December 2019. Starting January 2020, Medicare claims must use the MBI.
Additional information is available here.