BALTIMORE--HME providers beware: As of March 1, Medicare claim submissions must contain a National Provider Identification number or an NPI/legacy pair in the required primary provider fields or the claim will be rejected, CMS officials emphasized during a national roundtable call on Wednesday.
And on May 23, all Medicare claims submitted with anything other than an NPI will also be rejected, they said.
CMS staff again encouraged all providers to test small batches of claims by using only the NPI number. That will allow time to get any problems resolved before the May 23 date. If the claims are paid with no problem, providers should begin increasing the number of claims in the batch, CMS advised, noting only a small number of providers have so far tested claims this way.
In addition to NPI deadlines, CMS has also issued a number of dates that should be on providers' calendars. Among them:
--Accreditation deadlines: Jan. 1, 2009, for providers applying to the National Supplier Clearinghouse before March 1, 2008; on or after March 1, 2008, those seeking enrollment must be accredited prior to submitting an application; and by Sept. 30, 2009, all providers must be accredited. View a list of CMS' approved DMEPOS accrediting organizations.
--Revised supplier standards draft rule comments: March 25, 2008. Comments may be submitted online at http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions under the "Comment or Submission" tab and enter the file code CMS-6036-P.
--Although no firm dates for the second round of competitive bidding have been issued, CMS said it expects to begin pre-bidding activities--announcing specific zip codes that constitute the competitive bidding areas, specific items in each product category and bidder education and registration for user IDs and passwords--this spring. Bidding is expected to begin sometime this summer.