Medicare card rollout update

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has started mailing new Medicare cards to recipients living in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, which represent Wave 4 of the new card rollout that began this spring.

CMS is also continuing to mail new cards to beneficiaries in the Wave 3 states of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, as well as new Medicare beneficiaries wherever they live. CMS has finished mailing cards to beneficiaries in the states and territories that made up Waves 1 and 2, including Alaska, American Samoa, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Maryland, Northern Mariana Islands, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia, and West Virginia. CMS plans to complete the new card rollout nationwide by April 2019.

You can continue to direct Medicare beneficiaries to Medicare.gov/NewCard for information about the mailings and to sign up for email updates about card mailings in their state. You can also check the mailing strategy as the mailings progress.

If patients with Medicare say they did not get a card, you can print and give them the “Still Waiting for Your New Card?” handout (in English or Spanish) or instruct them to:

•     Sign into MyMedicare.gov to see if CMS mailed their card. If so, they can print an official card. They need to create an account if they do not already have one.
•     Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). They may need to correct something, such as their mailing address.

As a reminder, you can use either the former Social Security number-based Health Insurance Claim Number or the new alpha-numeric Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) for all Medicare transactions through Dec. 31, 2019. You can also look up your Medicare patients' new MBI through the secure web portal of your Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC).

For more Information on the transition to the new Medicare cards:

• New MBI Get It, Use It MLN Matters Article (Updated7/11/18).
• Transition to New Medicare Numbers and Cards MLN Fact Sheet.
• New Medicare Card information website.

– Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians