Do students and interns need an NPI number? 

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Each health care provider is assigned a unique identification number — NPI. All health care providers are eligible for this number. They can be various medical organizations, hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes, or specialists who provide certain services — dentists, therapists, podiatrists, ophthalmologists, and others. Students who are educated in the field of medicine, as well as interns, can apply to get their NPI. Accordingly, each of them can apply because they are also health care providers. Here’s an example. Let’s say you are in the athletic training department to later become a health care provider. In this case, you must not only have an understanding of what NPI is and what it’s for, but you must also get it. Therefore, you can apply for an NPI today.

The same goes for interns and residents who are already health care providers. If they are prescribing medications for their patients and referring them to other providers or making requests for tests, for example, health insurance programs may automatically require that the provider’s NPI be listed on the applications. That said, there is still no final decision on whether students, interns, and residents should have NPI, but as we can see, their activities will become more complicated without it.

Instructions for obtaining an NPI for students

The process of getting an NPI is fairly simple and will not require you to invest a lot of time. The first thing to start with is to go to the website where providers get NPI.

• Create a login. When you click on that, the system will redirect you to the next page. There you will need to accept the terms and conditions.
• The next step is to enter your email address. When you have entered it, click on the «Submit» button.
• Now you will have to generate a user ID and come up with a password. At this stage, the system will ask you to answer the security questions (there will be 5).
• Enter the necessary data, as well as the phone number you will use for your professional activities (you can enter your personal phone number at this stage).
• When your profile has been created, you can move on to submitting your application. To do this, go back to the main tab and enter your ID, confirm and submit your application.
• Next, enter your personal information, add your taxonomy (you can choose Student Health Services, select «Organized Health Education Student» as your primary taxonomy), click «Next» and follow the instructions.
• Fill out your contact information, confirm, and submit the form. You will then be sent an email with your NPI.

What do I do after I graduate?

You will need to update your NPI with your new information. To do this, go to the website again, remove the taxonomy code 390200000X-Student and set your basic code to match the activity. If necessary, change other information if you, for example, changed your residential address or phone number. At the end, be sure to save your updated information.