CMS-1500 Claim Forms
Purchase or download? Some considerations.
CMS-1500 (formerly HCFA-1500) claim forms may be purchased or downloaded
free of charge and printed. For most users, the first option will be the
most cost-effective and the most reliable.
Forms may be purchased directly from the U.S. Government Printing
Office, but are available at discounted prices from third party vendors.
At $35.00 for a case of 2,500 single sheet forms (from one vendor),
that's less than 1.5 cents per page. The cost of printing a CMS-1500
form on an ink jet printer could easily be four times that much or more,
not to mention the cost of premature printer failure due to large volume
printing.
Although it is more economical to buy forms by the case, they may be
purchased in packages of 500 and 100.
Print-ready PDF copies may be downloaded free of charge, but beware.
The PDF copy may not exactly match the original, and unless the printed
copy matches the original exactly in scale, font and even ink color, it
may, and probably will be, rejected. The following is a cautionary
statement from CMS:
"The National Uniform Claim Committee (NUCC) is responsible for the
design and maintenance of the CMS-1500 form. CMS does not supply the
form to providers for claim submission. In order to purchase claim
forms, you should contact the U.S. Government Printing Office at (202)
512-1800, local printing companies in your area, and/or office supply
stores."
"The only acceptable claim forms are those printed in Flint OCR Red,
J6983, (or exact match) ink. Although a copy of the CMS-1500 form can be
downloaded, copies of the form cannot be used for submission of claims,
since your copy may not accurately replicate the scale and OCR color of
the form. The majority of paper claims sent to carriers and DMERCs are
scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. This
scanning technology allows for the data contents contained on the form
to be read while the actual form fields, headings, and lines remain
invisible to the scanner. Photocopies cannot be scanned and therefore
are not accepted by all carriers and DMERCs." Source: