HICN no longer accepted beginning January 1, 2020

This is a reminder that providers will no longer be able to submit a Health Insurance Claim Number (HICN) or Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) number in item A0600B Medicare Number in the LTCH CARE Data Set (LCDS) assessments, nor on the Medicare claim.  The transition period that allows for submission of the HICN/RRB or Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI) in item A0600B ends on December 31, 2019. Beginning January 1, 2020, only the MBI will be accepted.  LTCHs who currently use the LASER tool to create assessments for submission to CMS will not be notified via an error message in the software if a HICN or RRB is entered in A0600B after January 1. 

However, when the assessments are extracted from LASER for submission into the internet Quality Improvement System (iQIES), any assessments that contain a HICN or RRB will be rejected by iQIES with fatal error -1039: Incorrect Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI).  If this error occurs, the LTCH will need to correct the value in item A0600B and resubmit a corrected assessment to iQIES.   Details regarding this error are available in the Errata V3.00.2 dated September 6, 2018, posted in the Downloads section on the LTCH quality reporting program webpage at https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/LTCH-Quality-Reporting/LTCH-Technical-Information.

For additional details and resources regarding use of the MBI, we refer you to the MLN Matters Article to learn how to get and use MBIs.

Please direct any questions regarding the above information to the QIES Technical Support Office (QTSO) help desk by email at iqies@cms.hhs.gov or by phone at (877) 201-4721.