Author Topic: Will my taxes be increased due to payments going to my NPI number?  (Read 4896 times)

Michele

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Question

I work for a County agency in Florida that is trying to organize it's billing procedures. The agency receives grants and county money. The services are directed to adults, a large part of the population is indigent, small portion of the clients are insured.
The agency is requesting to some clinicians to get a NPI number for the billing process indicating that the agency will be operating as a Group Practice. Does the agency has an obligation to reimbursed the clinicians for using their NPI number? Could my taxes increased due to the payment the insurance will made every time a bill has my NPI number? Does the agency needs to purchase a high insurance to protect clinicians whom their NPI number is been used for the agency billing? Do I need to buy insurance myself for protection?
Can the agency bill clients just using it's own NPI number? Why do they need my NPI number?
Thank you,
SF


Answer
Hi,
You have several questions and I will try to answer them all. First, in regards to whether the agency has to reimburse the clinician for the use of their NPI number, the answer is no. NPI numbers are issued for free, and all medical service providers are required to get them. They are used to tell the insurance carrier who the provider was that actually rendered the services. The agency will have to have them on the claims in order to get reimbursed. Your taxes will not increase due to the agency using your NPI number if they use it properly. They need a group NPI number in addition to the clinicians needing individual NPI numbers. They should use their group NPI number as the provider to be reimbursed, and your individual NPI number to advise who performed the service. I am not aware of any additional insurance being needed due to NPI numbers. The NPI numbers are hopefully going to replace other insurance provider numbers that are currently being used, and eliminate the need for different provider numbers for each company. In addition, you should not need any additional insurance to protect yourself. Nothing is really changing, it’s just that they are assigning a number to you to identify you uniquely as a provider. The agency does need to bill using their Type II NPI number for their group, but they also need individual NPI numbers to identify the clinicians. If they bill properly it won’t affect you at all. If they don’t they won’t get reimbursed properly, so they will have a big incentive to do it the right way. Good luck, I hope this helped.
Michele
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