Prepare for New Medicare Cards

The new Medicare card is a result of MACRA’s requirement that CMS issue Medicare cards that do not display Social Security numbers to address the risk of beneficiary identity theft. New Medicare cards will be issued beginning in April 2018 and physician offices must be prepared to accept the new Medicare identification number at that time.

As the new Medicare cards will significantly impact physician practices’ workflows, AMS strongly encourages physicians and the office staff to contact your software vendor to make sure there will be no delay in filing claims using the new Medicare cards.

The new cards will be clearly different than those with the Social Security numbers. The new ID will be 11 characters in length and will have numbers, an uppercase letter and no special characters.