In recent years, seniors have become increasingly vulnerable to personal identity theft. To help curb this trend, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced that it will issue new membership cards with new health insurance claim numbers (HCIN) instead of using Social Security numbers as they had before. The HCIN number is used in transactions like billing, coverage eligibility status and claim status.
For decades, people’s Social Security numbers have acted as their Medicare HCIN numbers and were printed on membership cards. This left seniors at significant risk for identity theft from anyone who had access to their cards. Medicare members will receive their new cards sometime between April 2018 and April 2019.
A UW Medicine project team is working to ensure that we are prepared for this upcoming change, and training is being provided for staff on how to work with the new member numbers. As the cards are distributed, the project team will share more information through the Enterprise Revenue Cycle change communication process.
To alert our patients to the upcoming change, UW Medicine is placing signage in high patient traffic areas and in high Medicare volume clinics.
We are also advising patients to ensure their mailing address for Medicare is up-to-date by visiting ssa.gov/myaccount or by calling 1-800-772-1213 (TTY:1-800-325-0778).
Read more about the Medicare member card changes. For more information on staff training about the new cards, contact Enterprise Revenue Cycle Training, at ctrain@uw.edu.
