ICD-10 & Coding
The added work anticipated from meaningful use requirements, the pressure to achieve data sharing and the clock ticking toward the 2014 deadline for conversion of diagnostic and medical billing codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets has driven the demand for consultants, creating what some call a boom.
An Aug. 24 decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to delay the ICD-10 compliance date one year has some providers in a haze, where they're left deciphering the often-encrypted implications of the pushback.
An idea can change a lot over eight years and while the intent of interoperability remains essentially the same, its application has split off in various directions since 2004, when the Bush administration called for establishment of electronic health records, universal connectivity between healthcare providers and named David Brailer, MD, as national health information technology coordinator.
The new ICD-10 deadline of October 1, 2014 is a mere two years away. That doesn't leave a lot of time for healthcare organizations to meet the mandate, particularly those who have not yet even started the conversion. One expert offers some tips for making smart use of the extra year.
When Farzad Mostashari, MD, the national coordinator for health IT, thinks about health information exchange (HIE), he's also thinking about grammar and parts of speech.
Payer performance improvement remained flat in 2011, according to the seventh annual PayerView rankings released today by health IT company athenahealth. That's attributed in part to new compliance measures and major information technology shifts.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) on Wednesday submitted comments on ICD-10 proposed rulemaking to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. CHIME urged HHS to remain committed to ICD-10, while calling the one-year delay an appropriate "middle ground" for all stakeholders.
Heather Haugen, vice president of research at the Breakaway Group, a Xerox subsidiary, discusses some opportunities created by the ICD-10 delay in terms of clinical documentation and alignment with EHRs, controlling coders' learning curves and addressing anticipated productivity loss following the compliance deadline.
Postponing ICD-10, whenever the new compliance date might end up being, would do little to improve readiness – but could have significant adverse effects and substantial costs, said a majority of respondents to a survey from Edifecs, which develops technologies for regulatory compliance and data exchange.
When it comes to ICD-10 preparedness, payers are well ahead of providers in the quest to be ready for the new coding format by the Oct. 1, 2013 deadline. That news probably doesn’t come as a shock to anyone involved in the process, but it shows that the claim-filing infrastructure should be ready on the receiving end, coding experts say.