As of January 1, 2020 Medicare no longer uses a person's social security number as their insurance ID number. Medicare cards are now using Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers (MBI) for transactions such as billing, eligibility, and claim status.

Every person with Medicare has been assigned an MBI. The MBI is confidential and should be protected as with Personally Identifiable Information. 

If you see Medicare clients, you must submit claims using MBI's, no matter what date you performed the service. If you are billing in January for a service that was rendered in December, use the MBI.

Of course, there are a few exceptions for fee for service claims. Exceptions include appeals, audits, and claim status query if the claim was submitted prior to January 1st.

So what do these cards look like? They are very similar to the red, white, and blue cards from the past. The MBI's are 11 characters in length, made up of only numbers and uppercase letters. There are no special characters. And if you use a lowercase letter on claims, not to worry because Medicare will automatically convert to uppercase letters.

The MBI's do not use the letters S, L, O, I, B, and Z to avoid any confusion between some letters and numbers that look similar such as O and 0.

These MBI's are randomly generated, so there is no hidden meaning for the characters.

As always, make sure to get a copy of the MBI card and driver's license to keep on file.

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