Reynolds wouldn't disclose the expected cost of the NPI project, saying only that it affects about 35 percent of the applications at Blue Cross and Blue Shield and 50 percent of its business processes. The insurer will maintain its internal legacy ID numbers and match them to the NPIs, a strategy commonly called crosswalking.

Ideally, Reynolds said, all health care providers will obtain their NPI numbers by January, which would give the insurer five months to test its work before the May compliance deadline.

End is in sight

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. last week began to review designs for the second phase of its NPI project, which calls for crosswalking the 11 internal systems that will need to accept NPIs. The new phase will take about 10,000 man-hours and is set to be completed at the beginning of October, said Wayne Wilson, director of government systems at the Chattanooga-based company. After that, the insurer will begin working on the final phase: preparing systems to reject transactions that don't include an NPI. That part of the project is expected to take until next May to complete.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which does business in 47 states, has distributed newsletters and held workshops in an effort to get health care providers to apply for NPIs so it can load the new data into its systems, Wilson said. However, it still anticipates that many providers will wait until the last minute to obtain their numbers. "We have no leverage" over them, said Wilson, who wouldn't disclose cost data for the NPI project.