National Provider Identifier (NPI)
Every licensed healthcare provider, physicians and non-physician providers, are assigned with a National Provider Identifier or NPI number. These NPI numbers will follow the providers or the suppliers in all of their practice settings and locations. It is a ten-digit number whose last digit is the check digit. And it is intelligence-free so that there is no information about the provider is encoded in the digits. The Healthcare Portability and Accountability Act requires the NPI numbers so that Electronic Billing through mandated HIPAA transaction standard will be simplified. With NPI numbers, the multiple legacy identifiers like UPINs will be replaced with a single identifier. Lastly, using NPI, the Coordination of Benefits payments will be a lot faster.