Pub. 100 ‐ 4, Transmittal #1462, CR# 5951

The Healthcare Provider Taxonomy Codes (HPTC) set is maintained by the National Uniform Claim Committee (NUCC) for standardized classification of health care providers. The NUCC updates the code set twice a year with changes effective April 1 and October 1. The HPTC list is available from the Washington Publishing Company (WPC) http://www.wpc-edi.com/codes/ taxonomy in two forms. The first form is a free Adobe PDF download. The second form, available for purchase, is an electronic representation of the code set that facilitates automatic loading of the codes.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that covered entities comply with the requirements in the electronic transaction format implementation guides adopted as national standards. The institutional and professional claim electronic standard implementation guides (X12 837 ‐ I and 837 ‐ P) each require use of valid codes contained in the HPTC set when there is a need to report provider type or physician, practitioner, or supplier specialty for a claim.

Valid HPTCs are those codes approved by the NUCC for current use. Terminated codes are not approved for use after a specific date and newly approved codes are not approved for use prior to the effective date of the code set update in which each new code first appears. Although the NUCC generally posts their updates on the WPC Web page three months prior to the effective date, changes are not effective until April 1 or October 1 as indicated in each update. Specialty and/or provider type codes issued by any entity other than the NUCC are not valid, and Medicare would be guilty of noncompliance with HIPAA if Medicare contractors accepted claims that contain invalid HPTCs.

Taxonomy code changes are to be applied to claims processed on and after the implementation date of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) CR 5951.

The Healthcare Provider Taxonomy Codes log of new, modified, and deleted codes was updated January 1, 2008 with the changes that will be come effective April 1, 2008. The HPTC list is available from the Washington Publishing Company (WPC) at http://www.wpc-edi.com/codes/taxonomy .

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