MEDICARE RX BYTES

Before January 1, Test Medicare Eligibility and Ask Your Medicare Patients for Yellow Enrollment Paper

Medicare has indicated that many Medicare patients will not have their Part D prescription benefits card when the program begins on January 1, 2006. In the absence of cards, there will be two ways to obtain information necessary to process Part D claims:

1. Use the electronic eligibility check (E1 transaction). Contact your software vendor to test drive the eligibility check prior to January 1.

2. Ask the patient for the yellow confirmation letter from Medicare. Every patient who signs up for a Part D plan should automatically receive this letter.

Both the eligibility check and the yellow confirmation letter will contain the following information:

• Patient’s ID number
  
• Patient’s Group number 
  
• Part D Plan BIN number
  
• Part D Plan PCN number