Does your organization have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that use ICD-9 CM diagnosis or ICD-9 procedure code information? If so, those procedures and systems need to be evaluated as part of the ICD-10 Impact Assessment.
We believe we can save health plans and self-funded employers 15% or more, and accelerate claims payments to providers from 90 days to 7 days. If you can do that, you can get the CFO of the healthcare organization to consider investing in the future, which includes all of the regulatory compliance work for ICD-10 and related initiatives.
Health care providers should ensure that the EMR vendor is on track toward ICD-10 compliance, however they should not rely on their EMR vendor as the panacea. Most hospital systems we work with have many more ancillary systems in radiology, etc. that are also impacted, and the EMR isn't the core system of record (yet) for everything that goes on in a hospital.
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.