The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) mandated that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopt a standard unique health identifier for health care providers. On January 23, 2004, the Secretary published a Final Rule that adopted the National Provider Identifier (NPI) as this identifier. All HIPAA covered healthcare providers, whether they are individuals or organizations, must obtain an NPI for use to identify themselves in HIPAA standard transactions. Once enumerated, a provider's NPI will not change. The NPI remains with the provider regardless of job or location changes. HIPAA covered entities such as provider completing electronic transactions, healthcare clearinghouses, and large health plans, must use only the NPI to identify covered healthcare providers in standard transactions by May 23, 2007. The SecureClaims NPI Solution provides both X12 and non-X12 clients the ability to submit their NPI on Claims and Real-Time transactions.