Physicians must validate their Medicare enrollment by 2013

As part of its anti-fraud campaign, Medicare will ask about 750,000 physicians and more than 1.4 million healthcare professionals to revalidate their enrollment records by 2013.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is trying to eliminate providers who don't have Medicare billing privileges. CMS will be mailing revalidation requests until March 23, 2013.

Physicians who have enrolled since March 25, 2011, will not have to revalidate because they have been screened already under the new criteria. CMS warns that physicians who ignore the request could lose their Medicare billing privileges. Physicians will have 60 days to revalidate their information and can do so either with paper applications or via CMS' online enrollment system.