The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it is initiating a contingency plan that extends the enforcement date for the National Provider Identifier (NPI) from May 23, 2007 to May 23, 2008. Physician practices, covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), are required to get NPIs for their organizations and their providers, and submit those numbers on all HIPAA electronic standard transactions, including claims. Medicare is also requiring use of the NPI on the revised paper CMS-1500 Form (08-05).

To avoid payment disruption after the compliance date, physician practices should strive to enumerate their providers and update practice management systems to accommodate both NPIs and legacy identifiers. To facilitate billing, practices should send their NPIs to all industry partners that require them.

More than sixty-five percent (65%) of the SCAN providers have proffered their NPIs. We are requesting those outstanding providers to secure their numbers from CMS and provide SCAN and AHCCCS with their NPIs.

To apply for your NPI online, please visit:

https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov

For more information from AHCCCS, please visit:

http://www.ahcccs.state.az.us/HIPAA/Documents/PDFs/NPIDocuments/