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Attention All Part B Providers in Connecticut and New York
Effective December 15, 2009, All Connecticut and New York Part B providers will call the National Government Services interactive voice response (IVR) at 877-869-6504. National Government Services Part B Medicare currently has four Multi-Carrier System (MCS) claims processing environments, which were inherited when we transitioned to the Jurisdiction 13 (J13) A/B Medicare administrative contractor (MAC). The four regions or segments are: Connecticut, Upstate New York, Queens County, and Downstate New York. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has instructed National Government Services to merge these environments. We will begin the merge of these systems on December 12, 2009.
For more information and a timeline of dark days and payment information, please see our Web site at http://www.ngsmedicare.com/Content.aspx?CatID=2&DOCID=20757.
With the merge of the claims processing system, it is necessary for National Government Services to streamline the IVR. Currently we have four (4) IVR systems; one for each of the four Part B regions we serve.
Effective with the systems merge, all Part B providers in Connecticut and New York will utilize a single telephone number to access the Medicare IVR system. The new IVR number will be used as of December 15, 2009. We believe this will be a positive change for providers.
As we have previously stated, in order to transition our claims workloads successfully, CMS has approved two (2) system dark days for this transition. National Government Services Medicare received CMS approval for “Dark Days" on Monday, December 14 and possibly Tuesday, December 15 to execute the merge. The dark days affect all Part B J13 MAC providers.
On these dark days Medicare online systems will not be available for either internal or external use. System dark days impact the availability of claims processing and payments, EDI transactions, the Customer Contact Center, and the IVR system.
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