November 14, 2007
Mandatory Reporting of the National Provider Identifier (NPI) on all Part B Claims
Effective March 1, 2008, your Medicare fee-for-service claims must include an NPI in the primary provider fields on the claim (i.e., the billing, pay-to provider, and rendering provider fields). You may continue to submit NPI/legacy pairs in these fields or submit only your NPI. The secondary provider fields (i.e., referring, ordering and supervising) may continue to include only your legacy number, if you choose. Failure to submit an NPI in the primary provider fields will result in your claim being rejected, beginning March 1, 2008.
In addition, if you already bill using the NPI/legacy pair in the primary provider fields and your claims are processing correctly, now is a good time to submit to your contractor a small number of claims containing only the NPI in the primary provider fields. This test will serve to assure your claims will successfully process when only the NPI is mandated on all claims.
