Any time a transition is widely likened to Y2K, misconceptions are bound to crop up – and a number of myths typically sprout. ICD-10 is by no means exempt from such chaos. And so it's time to kill the most prominent of those myths at the root.
Amid the din are plenty of obstacles, technical, cultural, educational, and otherwise, that will not be so easily dispelled. Here, then, are the five fables healthcare organizations can promptly disregard.
Myth 1: ICD-10 either won't happen or a grace period will
Fact: First things first, of course. ICD-10 is real and the deadline for compliance remains October 1, 2013.
“I’ve been going out doing training for the past year and a half and I’m finding that when I ask someone what ICD-10 is, a lot of the time they don’t know, or they don’t know enough about ICD-10, or their comment is: will that ever happen?” explains Deborah Grider, vice president of strategic development at AAPC, the American Academy of Professional Coders.
Well, straight from the lips of CMS, here it comes: “It's a firm cutoff date,” says Pat Brooks, a senior technical advisor at CMS. “You can't report ICD-10 codes early and you can't report ICD-9 codes late.”
Myth 2: The time to start training is nigh
Fact: Begin implementation soon, yes; actual in-depth training, no.
Even though some opportunists are trying to strike the panic chord, CMS and AAPC agree that the best time for training coders and anyone else who touches ICD-10 data is during the year of implementation. Ideally, that's the first quarter of 2013 or at the earliest the fourth quarter of 2012.
Train too early and, well, you just might have to offer a refresher course. If workers don't use the newly-acquired coding knowledge and skills on a daily basis, they're likely to forget it, Grider says, thus essentially negating the initial training along with time, money, and effort that went into it. That said, now is the time to start planning and budgeting for that in-depth training, which includes learning about the organization, structure and hierarchy of ICD-10, both AAPC and CMS maintain.
[Podcast: Leveraging ICD-10 to clean up your business. See also: Why 2010 is the pivotal year for ICD-10.]
Myth 3: All ICD-10 coding needs to be performed electronically and, as such there will be no hard-copy coding books
Fact: “The use of ICD-10-CM is not predicated on electronic hardware or software,” says Sue Bowman, director of coding policy and compliance at AHIMA.
What's more, ICD-10-CM code books, in dead tree format, are already available and, Bowman adds, of a manageable size.
Myth 4: ICD-10 requires overly-detailed medical documentation
Fact: Much of the detail ICD-10-CM will necessitate is already included in the ICD-9-CM documentation, according to Bowman. “It's just not being used because ICD-9 doesn't require it.”
And non-specific codes will continue to be available in the event that the documentation does not support a higher level of specificity. ICD-10-CM also brings a Placeholder 'X' option to allow for future expansion in certain areas.
Myth 5: The increased number of codes will make ICD-10-CM impossible to use
Fact: All apologies to the hopeful, but this won't stop or even postpone ICD-10-CM because just the opposite is true, at least according to CMS. ICD-10-CM's “greater specificity makes it easier to find codes,” Bowman says. CMS claims that “the improved structure of ICD-10-CM will facilitate the development of increasingly sophisticated electronic coding tools that will assist in faster code selection.”
These five myths may be just that, but myriad challenges remain in assessment, testing, training, and ultimately going live come compliance day. Indeed, ICD-10 is so frequently compared with Y2K because it ranks up there in size, expense, and scope of the project – and that same clock ticking in healthcare IT professionals' ear.
Tom Sullivan blogs regularly at ICD10 Watch.com.
