While healthcare providers of all sizes grapple with the upcoming change to a ICD-10 and its more robust method of coding medical procedures and care, providers should also prepare for a sobering reality: Coder productivity is likely to drop significantly in the early months of implementation.
This one of the messages presented Wednesday by Garri Garrison, director of consulting services for 3M Health Information Systems, during her presentation “ICD-10: A Roadmap for Success” at the Healthcare Finance News Virtual Conference & Expo.
When Canada implemented ICD-10, Garrison said, coders saw a productivity drop of between 32 percent and 50 percent during the first six months of implementation.
But treating ICD-10 as a simple coding issue is missing the boat, Garrison said. Understanding that the conversion to ICD-10 is an enterprise-wide activity needing clear communication across the breadth of an organization is necessary to properly manage the complexities of implementation.
"There are four tracks: clinical, financial, HIM and IT,” said Garrison. “You may have a steering committee with multiple members, but you are going to want at least to have project managers in these four tracks to get you prepared.”
Simply focusing on these four business areas is not enough, she said. All four tracks need to be continuously communicating with each other about what they are doing and how this work might impact the other tracks.
“This is something you should be doing today,” said Garrison.
With vendor relations, it's better to be proactive than reactive, she said. This includes knowing when vendors will have news interfaces ready, when they will have test environments and when one can go live.
“This is one of the dances that will be one of the largest challenges,” Garrison said. “When you have co-dependent systems, when can you test? Because you will need the dates from both of your vendors.”