The Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH) Foundation is helping its 150 member hospitals prepare for the ICD-10 transition through a Web-based program from QuadraMed.
TORCH is offering the QuadraMed ICD-10 Countdown Program through a grant from the Texas Department of Rural Affairs (TDRA).
"Every hospital is concerned about the potential adverse administrative effects, as well as coding backlogs, that can occur during the transition to ICD-10," said Quang Ngo, chief executive officer of the TORCH Foundation. "Through TDRA and TORCH, healthcare providers have the opportunity to leverage QuadraMed's ICD-10 educational and training products and services, which ensure that coders are fully educated and comfortable in the new coding environment prior to ICD-10 conversion."
The QuadraMed ICD-10 Countdown Program provides hospitals and healthcare organizations with hands-on training, assessment services and coding technology for ICD-10 adoption. The program also supplies hospital coding professionals with an accelerated ICD-10 educational program that includes real-world ICD-10 simulation training within live production environments. The introductory offering of QuadraMed's ICD-10 Solutions consists of:
- Quantim ICD-10 Coding Simulator application
- ICD-10 fundamentals educational tool
- Online application tutorial – Countdown to ICD-10
- Admission and participation in QuadraMed's ICD-10 community bulletin board
- ICD-10 readiness assessment
"QuadraMed was the first to launch an ICD-10 coding simulator in early 2010, and we continue to lead the industry with our unique ICD-10 Countdown Program, which is intended to take health systems from initial readiness analysis to real-life training scenarios," said Duncan W. James, QuadraMed CEO. "Given Canada's experience of a 23 to 50 percent decrease in coder productivity during their ICD-10 conversion, we created an ICD-10 training program and Readiness Assessment service to help keep U.S. health systems running smoothly and effectively during the conversion."
Prior to October 1, 2013, healthcare providers that fall under HIPAA provisions, regardless of whether they submit Medicare or Medicaid claims, must have completed their conversion from ICD-9 to ICD-10. The increase in code sets is significant, with disease classifications increasing from 13,000 ICD-9-CM to 68,000 ICD-10-CM and procedure classifications rising from 3,000 ICD-9-PCS to 78,000 ICD-10-PCS. Healthcare organizations not using ICD-10 by the deadline risk losing part of their CMS reimbursement.
