Citing the fact that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems (CMS) is “flying in the face” of the original intent of the National Provider Identifier (NPI) final rule, the National Uniform Billing Committee (NUBC) wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt on April 16 to ask for a six-month extension of the May 23, 2008, NPI enforcement deadline.
As of that date, healthcare providers can no longer use legacy identifiers when submitting claims; instead they must use only the NPI. However, the NUBC points out that CMS made a significant change to its requirements only last week. Rather than being allowed to use a single NPI for their primary facility and its subparts (psychiatric unit, rehab unit, etc.), providers are now being “strongly encouraged” to obtain distinct NPIs for each of their facility subparts.
The NUBC believes that six extra months are needed to allow providers to complete the work necessary to ensure accurate mapping of these additional NPIs to legacy numbers. Read the letter.
