Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that new Medicare cards would be issued starting next month. As we previously reported, the government has been planning to revamp the card to reduce fraud. Medicare cards have historically included a SSN-based Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) that was an easy target for identity thieves and fraudsters. A new randomly-generated Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) will replace the HICN on the new cards.
The move to issue new cards was set in motion by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), which requires SSNs to be removed from Medicare identification cards within four years after MACRA's enactment.
CMS will have a transition period during which either the HICN or the MBI can be used to exchange data with CMS. The transition period is set to begin no earlier than April 1, 2018, and run through December 31, 2019.
For those looking for additional information, CMS has created presentations explaining the card's impact on different health care industry stakeholders.
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