Doctors may not be ready for single ID

The health care community as a whole needs more time to get up to speed on the new national identifier, a health care coalition says.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. Dec. 25, 2006.

Washington -- With less than six months to go before most physicians, other health care professionals and payers are expected to be using new ID numbers on claims, a workgroup following the issue has called on the government to allow more time to comply.

Any physician who files claims electronically with any type of public or private payer, even through a separate billing agency, must apply for and start using a 10-digit National Provider Identifier by May 23, 2007. Any doctor who bills Medicare electronically or by paper for services will need to use an NPI by that date or run the risk of delayed or rejected claims, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has warned.

But a group of health care professionals, insurers, health systems, claims system vendors and data clearinghouses said earlier this month that not all of the necessary pieces would be in place when the deadline arrives. The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, of which the American Medical Association is a corporate member, said CMS must implement a contingency plan that allows the industry to use old ID numbers for at least an additional 12 months beyond the deadline so that all parties are able to replace them with the new identifiers.

WEDI in October surveyed its members and found that many still lacked NPI capabilities and would not gain them until very close to the May deadline. For instance, more than half of those surveyed -- hospitals, drugstores and clinical labs in addition to physicians -- said they would not be ready to start using their ID numbers until after April 1.