National Provider Identifier (NPI) and the AG Bell Academy's Role

The AG Bell Academy for Listening and Spoken Language® is aware of the required National Provider Identifier number (NPI) for health care providers, and how Teacher's of the Deaf are not part of the taxonomy code listing of the application process for NPI.

Members of the Academy's Board of Directors and Auditory-Verbal Certification Committee have provided insight into the Academy's role pertaining to this issue. Reimbursement for Teachers of the Deaf holding the Cert. AVT® credential is indeed an important U.S.-based issue. The Academy conducted an initial investigation during its strategic planning and it was very apparent that the first step to solving this problem is to dramatically increase the number of Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapists®. Once an increased number of Cert. AVTs is achieved, the next step will be for states to license Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapists. A critical volume of states licensing Cert AVTs will support changes in the taxonomy code listing and third party reimbursement. It is very difficult to make any changes to the taxonomy code due to the small number of Cert. AVTs® that we have currently in the U.S.

The Academy is working to aggressively increase the number of Cert. AVTs®; we are aware that this process could take years to accomplish. Dramatically increasing the numbers of Certified Auditory-Verbal Therapists® may be a very lengthy battle, but the Academy is committed to staying the course and ensuring that all of our listening and spoken language specialist are recognized and are able to receive an NPI number in the future.

For more information on how to apply for a National Provider Identifier (NPI), please visit the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System website.

If you would like to submit a request to add a new category to the NPI taxonomy listing, you can send an email to Taxonomy Listing requesting new codes or modifications to existing taxonomy listing.

Criteria for Adding/Modifying the Taxonomy Listing

The criteria for reviewing change requests to the Health Care Provider Taxonomy code set is based on the following factors:

" Proven business need for acceptance / change (e.g., Cost savings, increased efficiencies, with the benefits of the acceptance / change outweighing the costs of implementation. As this is a national list, requests should help solve needs on a national level vs. state specific level.)

" No existing code that will suffice in place of the perceived need for a new code

" Does the new request (for a medical specialty code) presently exist within the American Board of Medical Specialties?

" Does the Organization code presently exist with the code list? Is there consistency between the list and the POS code list?

While existing Level I Health Care Provider Type codes and Level II Health Care Provider Classification codes have been defined, the same cannot be said for all Level III Health Care Provider Area of Specialization codes. Therefore, every new request must be accompanied by a definition. Requests lacking definitions will not be considered for inclusion in future revisions of the Health Care Provider Taxonomy code set.

Code List Publication

The Health Care Provider Taxonomy code set is published twice a year (July and January). The July publication is effective for use on October 1st and the January publication is effective for use on April 1st. The time between the publication release and the effective date is considered an implementation period to allow providers, payers and vendors an opportunity to incorporate any changes into their systems.