I love watching the Masters. So much so, I’ll let CMS be my ‘caddy’ and do the heavy lifting – authorship – of this week’s Tip:
“In order to combat identity theft, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) will be changing the format of all Medicare numbers. Instead of being based on a beneficiary’s Social Security number, each Medicare number will be an individually generated combination of letters and numbers. As a result, every existing Medicare beneficiary will get an updated Medicare Card that lists their new Medicare number. All Medicare cards
will be replaced (starting) in (April) 2018 through (April) 2019.”
“The MBI (Medicare Beneficiary Identifier) is an 11-digit alpha numeric value that will replace the Social Security Number (SSN)-based HICN.
Key Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) characteristics:
- New Non-Intelligent Unique Identifier
- 11 bytes
- Key positions 2, 5, 8, and 9 will
always be alphabetic.”
“The new cards won’t change Medicare benefits. People with Medicare may start using their new Medicare ID cards and MBIs as soon as they get them. Until they receive the
new Medicare ID card members are to continue using their current Medicare ID card and current HICN.”
Now back to Patrick, Rory and Jon.
