The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has requested clearinghouses that submit claims to fee-for-service Medicare to participate in a one-day National Provider Identifier (NPI) preparation exercise. Specifically, on May 7, 2008, participating clearinghouses should submit Medicare claims with NPI-only in all provider identifier fields for which a provider uses NPI/legacy pairs. In other words, clearinghouses will strip the legacy identifiers when they are submitted as part of an NPI/legacy pair.
Fields already containing NPI-only will be sent to Medicare, as usual, and secondary provider identifier fields containing legacy-only will be sent to Medicare, as usual. This exercise will help Medicare providers evaluate their NPI readiness prior to the May 23, 2008, deadline.
On May 8, participating clearinghouses will revert to sending Medicare NPI/legacy pairs as received from the providers. Access more NPI guidance.
