CMS Med Advantage Reminder: Addition of Race and Ethnicity Data Fields on Enrollment Transactions for 2023
SUBJECT: Model Individual Enrollment Request Form to Enroll in a Medicare Advantage Plan (MA) or a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (Part D), and Advance Announcement of January 2023 Software Release – Addition of Race and Ethnicity Data Fields on Enrollment Transactions
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implements software changes to the enrollment and payment systems that support Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug (MAPD) programs. The purpose of this memorandum is to announce the addition of race and ethnicity data fields on the model Individual Enrollment Request Form to enroll in an MA or Part D plan, OMB No. 0938-1378 and provide high level advance notification of the associated system changes scheduled for release in January 2023. These new fields are required to be included on the enrollment form; however, applicant response to these questions is optional. When provided by an applicant, MA and Part D plans will submit these data to CMS as part of the enrollment transaction. If a plan receives a rejected transaction reply code (TRC) 394 or informational TRC 396 (see attachment C), the plan must send a subsequent corrected transaction code (TC) 92 to rectify. CMS expects plans to submit the beneficiary response to the race and ethnicity field, including confirming if the beneficiary did not provide the optional data. Until all race and ethnicity data are accepted by CMS, including annotating that the beneficiary did not answer the question, the field is not considered complete.