I reorganized by business last year to a PC. I received a letter from Novitas/CMS informing me that my supplier number PTAN under my previous practice structure has been deactivated because I had not submitted a claim for that PTAN in over a year.
Is there anything to be concerned about?
I am assuming that Practice A has ceased to exist and that you are now operating under Practice B. You seem to be indicating that you have not been submitting claims under the Practice A PTAN/NPI/Tax ID in more than 12 months.
Thus Medicare has the right to deactivate that number.
Here are some issues you should address:
Check with Medicare to be sure that it is very clear that it is the old PTAN which is being deactivated and not your current one for the new practice. It should be quite clear ast that PTAN/NPI should be on the letter.
The onus is on you to communicate any change in you to make sure that this is correct.
3. I would urge you in the future should you face a simillar restructuring to voluntary deactivate a combination which would no longer be valid after your last claim submission has been paid and finalized.
There are a variety of reasons for this:
1) Is to prevent a fraudster from taking over a dormant account and submitting claims under that ID, having edited the payee address and EFT have the payments go to them.
There are many unfortunate examples of this. One could still be held liable and be drawn into an investigation. While innocent you don't need those headaches.
2) You will now be known to MCR and other Federal Agencies as one who was deactivated by Medicare and YOU must now report this on any insurance application which asks that
awful question: " Have you ever been disenrolled by a payer which receives Federal or State Funding?" The answer now is yes and you must now explain. Do you really want to have to do that?
Even though it was for a valid reason.
If you answer no, then you are potentially falsifying a Federal document and that could be an even bigger issue. Ask Martha Stewart what happened to her when she lied to a Federal agent.
If you answer yes, which you should, you now have to explain and how the person reading the explanation accepts it as valid.
Next time you revalidate your local or DME Medicare enrollment, you will need to answer in the affirmative and explain.
To sum up, you may be correct in that this deactivation is for your old practice number which is defunct. You should check your current PTAN, NPI combination and be sure this is active and unaffected by the deactivation letter you received.
See if you can contact Novitas your NPE E carrier and see if it is not too late to
voluntarily disenroll the old entity.