CMS IDea Challenge: Strategies for Securing Member IDs
CALLING ALL INNOVATORS! The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is hosting two in-person events to combat fraud involving health plan identifiers (IDs) and enhance the security of those IDs. These collaborative events will bring together experts from diverse backgrounds to develop innovative ways to protect patient information.
Dates:
- December 5, 2025: San Francisco, CA
- December 10, 2025: New York City, NY
Background
Health plans use confidential member IDs for transactions like health care billing, eligibility status, and claim status. Individuals committing health care fraud are increasingly stealing Medicare Beneficiary Identifiers (MBIs) and other member IDs in various ways, such as deceiving patients, hacking into health care organizations’ systems, or misusing online lookup tools. Once member IDs are stolen, they are used to submit fraudulent claims to Medicare and other health insurance companies. This leads to financial losses and reduces trust in the healthcare system.
Format
Attendees will spend a full day working in small teams of diverse, professional backgrounds to develop ideas to improve member ID security. We want to hear from everyone’s differing perspective. At the end of the day, each group will pitch their solutions to CMS and vote on a winning concept. After the IDea Challenges, CMS will publish a summary of ideas pitched and the winner from each event.
Since the event is meant to be collaborative, participants should not arrive with a prepared idea or team. No technical skills, such as programming or software development, are required for participation.
Who We Expect to Hear From
CMS expects to hear from participants who can offer varied perspectives to better protect patient information. This includes individuals with backgrounds including, but not limited to:
- Health care (e.g., health plans, clinicians and their staff, and health care payment) to share best practices for securely working with patient information
- Payment processing to share secure payment workflows
- Cybersecurity to share safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to user information
- Clearinghouses to provide insights on secure data exchange and claims processing standards
- Program integrity to discuss strategies for detecting and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse
- Organizations close to Medicare beneficiaries to offer beneficiary-centered insights
How to apply
The deadline to submit an interest form was September 26, 2025. Thank you to those who completed the interest form.
Given space constraints, completing the interest form does not guarantee attendance. CMS will send official invitations and detailed event information to selected invitees in the coming weeks. All individuals who submit an interest form by the September 26, 2025 deadline will receive confirmation of their selection status by mid-October.
Questions and Event Communications
View our FAQs. Please direct any questions related to these events to CMSlearning@deloitte.com.
The CMS Learning Team will contact selected invitees from this email address. Please check your spam folder for emails from this address.