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Please give your opinion on ICD-10

Posted by  in Tuesday, November 25th 2008   
Topics: Open Topics    Tags: ,
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What do you think about the new ICD-10 codes?  What are your concerns?  What are your hopes?  Do you feel America is lagging behind Europe in this category?  What do you recommend?

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One Response to “Please give your opinion on ICD-10”

  1. Dorothy Hatten says:
    December 4, 2008 at 12:18 am

    The ICD-10 codes are definitely more specific and will make a huge impact upon not only research data but quality/performance data. ICD-10 allows for an infinite number of diagnoses where ICD-9 has proven to be very limited whether in diagnoses or procedures.
    The US is definitely way behind the World in terms of ICD-10 and will continue to be because ICD-11 is already in the works.
    Unfortunately while the providers/hospitals may be ready for the ICD-10 implementation, I do not believe the insurance payors will be ready. So while CMS will require the use of ICD-10 other commercial payors will not have their systems ready which will force providers/hospitals to utilize both coding systems until they are. This will cause delay in payment but also make reporting more complicated as far as research programs, disease registries as well as internal reporting.
    There is also a gap in opinions as to how much this is really going to cost facilities/providers in implementation fees – upgrading software systems, training coders, physicians and billing. It will be very interesting to see what the impact will be upon Medicare’s medical necessity policies as well. Many State Medicaid programs are consistently a year or more behind in updating their systems so again may require facilities/providers to maintain dual data base systems for coding data which could potentially result in reverting to paper claims vs the current electronic state.
    I do believer the conversion to ICD-10 needs to happen as this will bring more of a standardization to coding and hopefully to how it is used for reimbursement – but it is going to be a long hard road and I believe will have huge financial impact initially for many of the smaller facilities/clinics.

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