The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistic (NCVHS) subcommittee heard some testimony last week on the state of delayed ICD-10 implementation.
Holly Louie, chair of the ICD-10 CM Committee of the Healthcare Billing and Management Association, told the committee, “In other words, we can have 18 months of end-to-end testing. Unfortunately, the extremely disappointing response from CMS that they would delay this necessary testing until 2015 completely squanders that opportunity.”
Apparently there are differing opinions about how successful CMS testing went in March.
Sue Bowman, AHIMA’s senior director of coding policy and compliance, encouraged healthcare providers to keep several initiatives going:
• Clinical documentation improvement
• Education and engagement
• Testing — internally and with healthcare payers
• Improving ICD-9-CM coding and documentation
• Leveraging technology
• Identifying high-risk documentation and coding areas
William McElmurry , senior vice president and vertical practice leader at SoftServe, suggests
1. “Use the delayed compliance date to re-assess every aspect of your plan.”
2. “Extend your education and training plan.”
3. “Revise your financial plan.”
4. “Expand the testing phase of implementation.”
5. “Communicate with vendors and technology partners. ”
6. “Review technology obsolescence.”
Robert M. Wah, MD is the new president of the American Medical Association (AMA). He had a nice quote from the inaugural ceremony:
“Where health information technology, cloud computing and cyber-security intersects, we’ll find our patients. While it sounds like science fiction, it’s really just an ancient tradition—respecting the doctor-patient relationship and keeping it in confidence—while tapping new technology as yet another tool to help us take better care of our patients.”
It will be interesting how that view matches up with the AMA’s lobbying efforts this year.
Another good reason to get your ICD-9 coding done right. You may be in the wrong MS-DRG. Start coding correctly and your DRG shifts and productivity drops may not be so bad after Oct. 1, 2015.
Since the ICD-10 deadline was pushed back one year, there was temptation to just hit pause on the whole project. Except these five areas should still get your attention:
1. “Protect the Revenue Cycle”
2. “Ensure a Clinically Complete Translation”
3. “Prepare for Post ICD-10 Updates”
4. “Optimize Clinical Workflow”
5. “Structured Documentation and Automated Coding”
Sue Bowman writes a very readable counter argument to the ICD-10 leapfrogging idea:
• SNOMED-CT is complementary to ICD-10 coding not a replacement.
• ICD-11 implementation is at least 10 years away which would delay meaningful data analysis.
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Originally published on: Health IT
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