From the October 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
By Joy Burnette
For health care providers, clinicians and vendors, the race toward the non-negotiable October 14, 2014 transition from the International Classification of Disease version 9 to ICD-10 and ICD-10 Procedural Coding System is rapidly approaching the finish line. For some stakeholders, it will be a walk, while for others, it will be a hard-fought race. The difference between walking and racing will be determined by the degree of preparedness.
Cutting-edge and innovative IT solutions, powerful medical informatics, data analysis, and the increased diagnosis/procedure specificity with ICD-10, will assist in tracking disease patterns and clinical outcomes. This is most important as we move from the intervention model of care to a preventive population medicine model.
The transition can be met with confidence with the right plan, responsive and prepared vendors, consulting services, and expert training, along with robust, well-designed electronic tools. Clinicians and provider organizations should begin planning and implementing a plan with hard deadlines and milestones in order to cross that transition finish line. Even then, the race is not over. Post-transition surveillance, evaluation, and interventions for problem areas will require additional work.
There are two basic methods of charge capture widely used: paper superbills and electronic charge capture (ECC). Both are valid, but ECC is rapidly becoming the method of choice as it offers a rapid drill-down selection of the correct code. A paper superbill could become very large and convoluted, where as ECC provides a standard¬ized approach and format across multiple medical specialties. The sheer number of ICD-10 codes will require specific training for billers and clinicians which will take time, thorough training, and teamwork.
Many have focused their attention on the potential negatives of the transition but there are several aspects of switching ICD-9 to ICD-10 and ICD-10-PCS, resulting in a positive impact for patients, clinicians, the health care industry, and the general population at large. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services believes the increased speci¬ficity of the ICD-10 coding will be a key element in providing more meaningful data for quality-of-care analysis and population health reporting to improve patient outcomes, decrease medical errors, decrease unnecessary or repeated procedures, decrease biller to clinician clarification queries, and help to prevent fraud and abuse.
