by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | April 23, 2015
From the April 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
There are a number of tools available on the HIMSS ICD-10 Playbook, including a self-assessment tool that helps providers assess their financial exposure to ICD-10, a budget modeling tool that helps them plan and budget the critical activities necessary to prepare for the transition and an overview of the activities they should be focused on in the time they have remaining.
The CMS Road-to-10 is another great resource. Those further along in their preparations should be taking advantage of the next few months to participate in end-to-end testing with both CMS and their commercial carriers, and thinking about how they will operationalize ICD-10 after the deadline has passed.
HCBN: What have you done or what are you doing to prepare for the transition to ICD-10? Edward Babakanian, chief information officer at the University of California, San Diego Health System: We put together a plan, not only for the technical work, but also for training of our workforce, which certainly includes physicians as well as medical coders. The plan included electronic online education for physicians, coders and the rest of the organization. We’ve been working hard to be prepared and are ready. Our technical component is done and we have put together training material for physicians, and have task forces comprising physicians, nurses and RT folks.
Dr. Allison Suttle, chief medical information officer at Sanford Health: We have been preparing for ICD-10 for a while now. Within our EMR, we have been utilizing the diagnosis and problem list calculator to generate both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes. This has allowed our coders to begin the dual coding process and begin testing with payors, at the same time familiarizing our providers with the new level of detail needed in ICD-10. We are doing a phased approach to training providers with frequent feedback during the dual coding process.
HCBN: What progress have you made with population health management? Steve Hess, chief information officer of University of Colorado Health: UCHealth has created the structure and process to begin managing populations, and we have integrated those structures with the integrated EHR across University of Colorado Health. Our initial focus is on chronic condition cohorts like diabetes, COPD, and CHF. We have also begun the journey of creating a “big data” analytics engine to enable a personalized or precision medicine approach. This will not only assist in identifying the cohorts needed for true population health management, but it will also allow us to connect the research and learning to individual patient care plans in the EHR.
Dr. Jonathan Leviss, senior vice president and medical director of AMC Health: With reports from our payors, especially Neighborhood Health Plan of RI (Medicaid managed care), we identify high-utilizers and assign nurse care managers to each. We have been able to reduce utilization with some of the dual-diagnosis patients (psychiatric/substance abuse) in collaboration with other statewide efforts. Reports from our EHR also enable us to highlight groups of patients and teams of providers that need extra attention to key quality indicators (screening tests, clinical targets, etc.).
Allison Suttle: We have developed many tools in our EMR for population health and have created a medical home structure in our primary care clinics. Our panel manager nurses are utilizing our registries on patient populations, finding gaps in care and reaching out to at-risk patients with bulk messaging or lab ordering. Care teams are sending questionnaires to patients through our patient portal to close care gaps and increase patient engagement.
