Medicare Beneficiary Identifier

December 16, 2019
 / 
Rick Gawenda
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The Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015 required CMS to remove social security numbers from all Medicare cards and replace them with a Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI). The MBI is 11 characters in length and are made up of only numbers and upper case letters. The MBI doesn’t use any special characters (e.g. #, @, !, $) or the letters S, L, O, I, B, and Z to avoid confusion between some letters and numbers (e.g., between “0” and “O”).

So when must providers begin using the MBI on claims submitted to their Medicare Administrative Contractor? Beginning with dates of service on and after

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I hope you found this article helpful as you prepare for the transition to the MBI. Thank you for being a Gold Member!


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