In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The goals of HIPAA include:
- To protect workers who changed jobs against loss
of health insurance coverage or from being subject
to new health insurance coverage exclusions for pre-existing
conditions
- To guarantee the security and privacy of individually
identifiable health information
- To reduce administrative costs through standardization
- To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the
health care system by standardizing the electronic
transmission of certain health information
Please refer to the following links for additional
information on HIPAA.
National Provider Identifier assignment
begins
May 23, 2005 marked the first date that all physicians,
health care professionals and facilities could apply
for their National Provider Identifier (NPI). The NPI
will replace the health care provider identifiers used
today in standard health care transactions. The Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
of 1996 mandates that all covered entities except small
health plans must begin using the NPI on May 23, 2007;
small health plans have until May 23, 2008. Regence
BCBSU is working to ensure our systems and procedures
will accept and use NPIs by the compliance date.
Please continue to submit your claims (electronic or
paper) with your Regence BCBSU provider number as you
do today. Currently, if an NPI is submitted, we will
not store it in our systems or use it in claims processing.
We will publish articles in our Regence Report
newsletter with information about NPI throughout the
implementation period. This section of our Web site
will also be updated as information becomes available.
An article regarding NPI can be found in the online
issue of our Regence Report newsletter:
See the CMS Web site at https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov
for additional information related to NPIs.
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