Until now, hospitals and other healthcare organizations thought they had until May 23, 2008 to implemented the National Provider Identifier (NPI) scheme for Medicare claims--but they were wrong. CMS now says that hospitals must get the NPI in place for submitting Medicare fee-for-service claims by January 1, 2008. If they don't, CMS will begin rejecting such claims. (CMS is will still accept non-NPI claims from professional services providers like doctors, labs and clinics.) CMS officials say they're moving up the deadline because most providers are already on board with the NPI.
To be sure, providers who aren't using the NPI are already technically in trouble already, as the original deadline is long past. However, as part of the transition to full NPI rollout, CMS has been letting them slide if (in essence) they promised that they were working on it by filing a contingency plan.
To learn more about the new deadline:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece
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