ICD-10: Where will you be when the switch flips October 1?
ICD-10 will likely not be delayed again. Last year’s delay by itself was projected to cost the healthcare industry as a whole $6.8 billion. The House’s Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health debated ICD-10 implementation in detail during its February ICD-10 hearing where seven witnesses testified on both the potential positive and negative effects of ICD-10. As full Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said, “The United States is one of the few countries that has yet to adopt this most modern coding system. Australia was the first country to adopt ICD-10 in1998. Since then, Canada, China, France, Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Thailand—just to name a few—have all also implemented ICD-10. In the United States, Congress, through one vehicle or another, has prevented the adoption of ICD-10 for nearly a decade.” While several delays have taken place in the past, consensus shows that the switch will finally be flipped on October 1 of this year. Your Academy continues to work to facilitate the transition and help to make it as painless as possible. On the advocacy front, the Academy, along with numerous other organizations, signed onto a letter written to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), not urging for another delay of ICD-10, but rather urging CMS to publish further data on ICD-10 testing results, EHR vendor readiness, details on avoiding adverse impacts on quality measurement, risk mitigation plans, and more. (The letter is available online.) As for resources, the Academy has released an updated otolaryngology specific superbill that has a more expansive list of ICD-10 codes that serve a larger variety of subspecialist practices. In addition, Academy partner Optum has worked to make an otolaryngology specific ICD-10 Fast Finder Tool. Slides from the 2014 ICD-10 Annual Meeting Miniseminar provide simple questions to ask vendors and payers with solid examples on how to assess your claims at risk with an impact analysis and more. For more Academy resources, visit the Academy’s ICD-10 webpage. Reference http://energycommerce.house.gov/press-release/health-subcommittee-discusses-importance-and-readiness-icd-10-implementation
ICD-10 will likely not be delayed again. Last year’s delay by itself was projected to cost the healthcare industry as a whole $6.8 billion. The House’s Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health debated ICD-10 implementation in detail during its February ICD-10 hearing where seven witnesses testified on both the potential positive and negative effects of ICD-10. As full Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said, “The United States is one of the few countries that has yet to adopt this most modern coding system. Australia was the first country to adopt ICD-10 in1998. Since then, Canada, China, France, Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Thailand—just to name a few—have all also implemented ICD-10. In the United States, Congress, through one vehicle or another, has prevented the adoption of ICD-10 for nearly a decade.” While several delays have taken place in the past, consensus shows that the switch will finally be flipped on October 1 of this year.
Your Academy continues to work to facilitate the transition and help to make it as painless as possible. On the advocacy front, the Academy, along with numerous other organizations, signed onto a letter written to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), not urging for another delay of ICD-10, but rather urging CMS to publish further data on ICD-10 testing results, EHR vendor readiness, details on avoiding adverse impacts on quality measurement, risk mitigation plans, and more. (The letter is available online.) As for resources, the Academy has released an updated otolaryngology specific superbill that has a more expansive list of ICD-10 codes that serve a larger variety of subspecialist practices. In addition, Academy partner Optum has worked to make an otolaryngology specific ICD-10 Fast Finder Tool. Slides from the 2014 ICD-10 Annual Meeting Miniseminar provide simple questions to ask vendors and payers with solid examples on how to assess your claims at risk with an impact analysis and more.
For more Academy resources, visit the Academy’s ICD-10 webpage.
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