Despite the suggestion by some industry heavyweights, CMS (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) did not roll ICD-10 into the Meaningful Use final rule. That's not to say the term ICD-10 cannot be found within the 864-page document, rather, that there are no financial incentives for adopting ICD-10, a costly project in its own right, and a key piece of the EHR puzzle.
The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) in March penned a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explaining, among other things, why it believes that the ONC (Office of the National Coordinator) should “add compliance with ICD-10 code sets by 2013 as part of the vendor certification for Meaningful Use.” That reason, in short, was that providers are dependent on vendors, thus vendors' ability to provide required solutions is critical to the healthcare industry.
Agreeing, John Halamka, CIO of both Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and CIO at Harvard Medical School called for ICD-10 to be pulled into Meaningful Use a month later in an article in Health Affairs.
[Related: Top 3 understated aspects of ICD-10. See also: 3 of the many ways ICD-10 will permeate your health IT.]
Since ICD-10 promises to yield more specific data that can, in turn, be more effectively analyzed to ultimately create better health outcomes, tying it to EHRs now, rather than later, would be beneficial to payers, providers, and patients.
Potential financial reimbursement from the U.S. government “would ultimately steer providers and plans to bypass the minimal compliance solution and aim for a more optimal solution if they had the same incentives as Meaningful Use and could view ICD-10 from a global perspective,” says Mandy Willis, a senior consultant and certified coding specialist of ICD-10 SME at Hubbert Systems Consulting.
Since it's release last Tuesday, the final rule on Meaningful Use has seen mixed reactions, while many stakeholders are still assessing the document.
Tom Sullivan blogs regularly at ICD10Watch.com.