NPI, Other Deadlines Approaching

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.