Alert: We have an ICD-10 elephant in the room!

on February 17th, 2012   by Kim Felix

Well, there is suddenly a big elephant in the ICD-10 room, isn’t there???  What will happen?  For those of you who have not heard, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)  has announced there will be a new compliance deadline for ICD-10 implementation.  The unanswered questions abound but here are some seeds that have been planted…

The delay in the ICD-10 deadline MAY only affect physicians (Part B) since they are the ones who really upset the apple cart here.  The providers have many concerns about the administrative burdens of ICD-10…but don’t we all?

There have been no statements regarding how long the deadline will be extended….What we do know is that there is a rulemaking process which will involve a lot of ‘red tape’ in order to make a decision on how much of a delayed deadline there will be.  So time will be lost, right from the start. 

In a Jan. 30 statement, Dan Rode, Vice President for Advocacy and Policy at AHIMA, said, “Health care organizations should continue efforts to implement a new disease coding system by the October 2013 deadline, rather than waiting to see if Congress would authorize a delay. Stopping work on the transition to the ICD-10 code set would lead to large financial losses for health care organizations that have spent several years preparing for ICD-10, and would also cause organizations to miss the deadline.”

Stay tuned…as information develops, we will be sure to stay on top of it and keep everyone out there posted.  Hold on tight…looks like a bumpy ride ahead.