March 16, 2012
Effective January 1, 2012, Highmark Medicare Services (HMS) was acquired by Diversified Service Options, Inc. (DSO). Consequently, the HMS name has changed to Novitas Solutions, Inc. Novitas (pronounced NO-vih-tas) will now be the Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) for Jurisdiction 12 (J12) and Section 1011. The states included in J12 include Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Physicians and medical billing companies should not face many disruptions as a result of this transition. According to Novitas Solutions, the current Highmark Medicare website will be fully transitioned to the new Novitas site by March 30, 2012. During the transition, visitors to the old website (https://www.highmarkmedicareservices.com) will be automatically re-directed to the new Novitas Solutions website (https://www.novitas-solutions.com), where a new header and page logo can be seen. Bookmarks that users may already have for the Highmark website will purportedly still work with the new page. The Electronic Payer ID has not appeared to change, so claims submission and processing should remain unaffected by the transition. For more information, see the Informational Alert here: https://www.novitas-solutions.com/partb/info-alerts.html.
