Medicare carriers are providing a two-step instruction for what to do when you receive an errant or misdirected remittance advice for a patient who is not your patient.
First, destroy the remittance advice. Second, let the carrier or Medicare Administrative Contractor know it has sent a remittance advice to the wrong address or physician practice.
The carrier First Coast notes health care providers are subject to the privacy and security requirements under HIPAA. "You must safeguard patients' personally identifiable health information," and this applies even when the patient is someone else's patient.