Dave Biel, principal at New York City-based Deloitte, tells Gabriel Perna of Healthcare Informatics how a one-year ICD-10 implementation delay will help healthcare providers:
- Healthcare providers that were on track to comply by Oct. 1, 2013, have a chance to strengthen their plans.
- Healthcare providers that didn't start or were behind get a chance to catch up.
Andrea Kraynak talks to some healthcare information management (HIM) professionals about how to take advantage of the delay:
- Strengthen ICD-9 coding processes
- Correct documentation problems
- Focus on ICD-10 training
This has been the party line since mid February. American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon repeats her call for healthcare providers to adopt ICD-10 as quickly as possible. Now there is a deadline, hospitals and medical practices are more likely to fall in line.
Of course not everyone is happy with the delay. Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor with Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), wants staggered deadlines and a pilot program to test it (and five other steps to delay ICD-10 implementation further). The America Medical Association (AMA) is non-committal. "The postponement is the first of many steps that regulators need to take to reduce the number of costly, time-consuming regulatory burdens that physicians are shouldering," says a statement attributed to AMA president Peter Carmel. He says they're going to consider things.
Anyone else think that the vigorous opposition to ICD-10 implementation is about something else? Which is something that Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan tries to get at when he talks to Kaveh Safavi, managing director of Accenture's North America health industry unit, about incorporating the new deadline into ICD-10 project planning. Safavi doesn't speculate.
I don't think CMS is going to move any more on ICD-10 compliance. Look for more incentives and concessions regarding different aspects of the Affordable Care Act. This is bigger than ICD-10 coding.
Carl Natale blogs regularly at ICD10Watch.com.