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Edits on the Ordering/Referring Providers in Medicare Part B Claims (Change Requests 6417, 6421, and 6696)
May 3, 2010If you order or refer items or services for Medicare beneficiaries and you do not have an enrollment record in the Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System (PECOS), you need to submit an enrollment application to Medicare.
- Phase 1: Beginning October 5, 2009, if the billed Part B service requires an ordering/referring provider and the ordering/referring provider is not reported on the claim, the claim will not be paid. If the ordering/referring provider is reported on the claim but does not have a current enrollment record in PECOS or is not of a specialty that is eligible to order and refer, the claim will be paid and the billing provider will receive an informational message in the remittance indicating that the claim failed the ordering/referring provider edits.
- Phase 2: Beginning January 3, 2011, Medicare will reject Part B claims that fail the Ordering/Referring Provider edits. Physicians and others who are eligible to order and refer items or services need to establish their Medicare enrollment records in PECOS and must be of a specialty that is eligible to order and refer.
Enrolled physicians and non-physician practitioners who do not have enrollment records in PECOS and who submit enrollment applications in order to get their enrollment information into PECOS should not experience any disruption in Medicare payments, as a result of submitting enrollment applications. Enrollment applications must be processed in accordance with existing Medicare instructions. It is possible that it could take 45-60 days, sometimes longer, for Medicare enrollment contractors to process enrollment applications.
CMS has taken actions to reduce the number of informational messages.
In December 2009, CMS added the NPIs to more than 200,000 PECOS enrollment records of physicians and non-physician practitioners who are eligible to order and refer but who had not updated their PECOS enrollment records with their NPIs.‡
On January 28, 2010, CMS made available to the public, via the Downloads section of the “Ordering Referring Report” page on the Medicare provider/supplier enrollment website, a file containing the NPIs and the names of physicians and non-physician practitioners who have current enrollment records in PECOS and are of a type/specialty that is eligible to order and refer. The file, called the Ordering Referring Report, lists, in alphabetical order based on last name, the NPI and the name (last name, first name) of the physician or non-physician practitioner. To keep the available information up to date, CMS will replace the Report on a periodic basis. At any given time, only one Report (the most current) will be available for downloading. To learn more about the Report, and to download it, go to https://www.cms.gov/MedicareProviderSupEnroll; click on “Ordering Referring Report” (on the left). Information about the Report will be displayed.