PTAN

Provider Transaction Access Number — the unique identifier Medicare assigns to each enrolled provider, used for claims processing and enrollment management within the Medicare system.

Your PTAN is your Medicare-specific provider number. It is assigned when your Medicare enrollment is approved and is used by Medicare Administrative Contractors to process your claims and manage your enrollment records. The PTAN is different from your NPI, though both appear on Medicare claims. Your NPI is your universal identifier across all payers. Your PTAN is Medicare-specific and is tied to your specific enrollment record, including your practice location, specialty, and group affiliation. You can have multiple PTANs if you are enrolled in Medicare at multiple practice locations or under multiple group enrollments. Each enrollment record gets its own PTAN. If you practice at two locations under two different group practices, you might have two separate PTANs. Your PTAN is included in your Medicare welcome letter after your enrollment is approved. You can also look it up in PECOS. If you cannot find your PTAN, call your MAC's provider enrollment department with your NPI and they can look it up. When billing Medicare, both your NPI and PTAN are used to route the claim correctly. If your NPI and PTAN are not properly linked in Medicare's system, claims will deny. This linkage is established during the enrollment process when you reassign your benefits to a group practice or register your individual practice. A common issue when providers switch practices: the old PTAN is associated with the old group, and claims submitted under the new group using the old PTAN will deny. You need to either get a new PTAN for the new enrollment or have your existing PTAN updated to reflect the new group affiliation. This happens through a CMS-855 change of information update in PECOS. Do not confuse PTAN with the old UPIN (Unique Physician Identification Number) system, which was retired in 2007 when NPI became the standard. Some legacy systems still reference UPINs, but they are no longer used for billing.