When Cindy Seel asked the crowd at AHIMA’s annual convention what the shared goal for Oct. 1, 2014 should be, the response was predictable: Survive.
“The ICD-10 PCS is going to be the bear for all of us,” Seel said. “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily make it through gracefully in October, November or even December, but we have to do the best we can.”
During a session titled “Transitioning Physicians to ICD-10: 7 Steps to Take Now,” Seel, the director of education and training with consultancy HRS, outlined her suggestions for building trust with physicians to get them on board for ICD-10 come compliance day.
Those steps are:
1) Establish an overview of implementation training
On the notion that if you don’t chart a course you won’t even know when you arrive, this includes implementation, training and communicating the plan to everyone. Seel said that across the industry there is a broad range of readiness, with some networks running dual-coding, end-to-end testing, focusing on productivity, while on the other of the spectrum others are saying they know they have to get going but don’t have a lot of support for ICD-10.
2) Take small bites
“Physicians are not coders and coders are not physicians,” Seel explained. Not every doctor has to be assigned every code for a colonoscopy, and coders are not going to be diagnosing. She suggested starting with the ICD-10-CM and PCS guidelines from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and breaking down the top 10 for various roles, such as the most common codes a hospitalist would use, or those family practice doctors need to know, or ones physicians frequently encounter.
3) Recognize the best training model for your clinicians
And if you don’t know, just ask them. Recognize what has worked in the past and tap into that. So if the long-held practice of holding educational lunches is no longer productive, find something else. Seel has seen Factoid Fridays, a boot comp, and breaking down IDC-10 into 15-minute educational increments. “Find the method that will work for your doctors,” she said. “You need to sell your training. The fact remains physicians are overworked and don’t have time. They can’t always help you out.”
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Photo courtesy of: Medical Coding News
Originally published on: Government Health IT
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