One strategy is to continue to move ahead on ICD-10 process impacts, systems planning, and overall budgets but depending on readiness, get your consulting firm to help with both the requirements documentation and strategies for clinical documentation that don’t’ exist now. Why? The WEDI / NCHICA timeline suggests that health care providers should have started planning for ICD-10 about 18 months before the CMS announcement of a delay.
We do not support a delay in ICD-10. The delay hurts not only those who have invested dutifully to meet the CMS mandate on time, but it hurts independent contractors, small businesses, and Healthcare IT vendors who fill knowledge gap in Covered Entities who don't have the staff internally to meet this mandate.
On April 9, 2012 at 10:10am Pacific / 1:10pm Eastern time the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid announced a one year delay in ICD-10 to October 1, 2014.
In the ICD-10 Consortium social network this week, health plans posted questions regarding processing ICD-10 claims that have date of service periods that span the mandated timeline as well as an outreach to other health plans regarding the pros and cons of receiving an ICD-10 claim, mapping it to an ICD-9 to adjudicate it. Also, ICD-10 is expected to impact auto adjudication rates for plans.
Look for a balanced approach between EMR vendor, other systems, and an integration strategy that is vendor neutral, enabling all impacted systems to work together to assist in the ICD-10 transition.
Today's Wall Street Journal article on Reverse Mentoring sparked a thought. Healthcare needs reverse mentoring. RM was championed at GE by Jack Welch when he was chief executive. He ordered 500 top-level executives to reach out to people below them to learn how to use the Internet. Mr. Welch was matched with an employee in her 20s who taught him how to surf the Web. The younger mentors "got visibility," he said. For healthcare to change physicians, administrators, IT people and others should reach out to youth.
ICD-10 will drive initiatives such as bundling, as a component of health care payment reform. Therefore reimbursement, and case management and other areas must be viewed in a broader landscape. HIPAA mandates and health care reform impact one another.
ICD-10 implementations must move forward despite Presidential campaign promises to repeal 'Omabacare' or the Affordable Care Act. As Business Week pointed out this week, repealing the Accountable Care Act is not that easy. And even if it were repealed ICD-10 is a HIPAA mandate that was enacted prior to President Omaba's election in August 2008. Hospital systems should push ahead on ICD-10 Assessments, ICD-10 Implementation Plans, and get ready for the shift to ICD-10-CM which includes many more diagnosis codes than ICD-9. ICD-10 PCS also include many more procedure codes than ICD-9.
We find that most analytics and revenue cycle companies are ignoring the future role coordinated medical coding will have, the transition to ICD-10, and the clinical documentation and processes on the revenue cycle. The ICD-10 transition will re-write the book on revenue cycle management (RCM). RAC audits and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) will be subject to a new paradigm with ICD-10.
HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 implementation timelines were published as widgets for payers, large providers, small providers and vendors by Health and Human Services Centers for Mediare and Medicaid (CMS). There are helpful items such as actions to take immediately, for HIPAA 5010 and more regarding ICD-10.
ICD-10 creates challenges for health plans who want to transition successfully from ICD-9 with respect to defining and redefining medical policy. This presentation addresses best practice approaches
ICD-10 assessments should start with a thorough understanding of how to communicate, educate, train at all levels. Here are some topics our team can speak to for your organization including “ICD-10 Organization Strategy” and “ICD-10 and Business Continuity Planning” We have given many presentations throughout the US in the past year.