National Provider Identifiers (NPIs) are numeric identifiers required for use by all health care providers under HIPAA's Administrative Simplification regulations. NPIs further the goal of standardizing health care transactions between physicians, various payers and clearinghouses.
May 23rd, 2008 – NPI deadline
The original NPI deadline was May 23, 2007. However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency which oversees the NPI, recognized the health care industry needed more time to prepare for using the NPI. Therefore, they announced a one-year “contingency plan.” During this time physicians and other HIPAA “covered entities” will not face liability so long as they continue to move towards compliance in good faith, and develop and implement contingency plans to ensure that payment flow continues. The contingency timeframe ended on May 23rd, 2008. After this date, claims and other HIPAA transactions may only be sent with an NPI number. No legacy numbers may be used after this point. In the case of Medicare this includes both paper and electronic transactions.
Alert:
NPI primer (PDF, 19KB)
Additional resources:
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American Medical News articles on NPIs
Final regulations implementing the NPI (PDF, 248KB)
Content provided by: Office of the General Counsel