Understanding the Full Value of ICD-10

ICD-10 are a set of new medical diagnostic codes that will be used beginning October 1, 2014, but a new study shows that many health-care providers still don’t understand the value of these codes.

The study, conducted by eHealth Initiative and the American Health Information Management Association, shows that many health-care providers are focusing on the challenging parts of the transition to ICD-10. “They believe they are going to lose money and that it will negatively impact workflow,” said eHealth Initiative CEO Jennifer Covich Bordenick in a news release.

In fact, with ICD-10, the medical code set was expanded to improve the quality of care with more specific data. Properly used, ICD-10 could lead to enhanced performance and outcome measurement, quality improvement and even higher revenue.

Given that 26% of survey respondents reported that they had no specific goals to leverage ICD-10 other than for claims processing, however, capturing these benefits of the new code set could be a challenge.

One key to successful implementation is proper staffing and training, changes to workflows and any necessary software upgrades. Your IT provider can help you navigate the changes of ICD-10 for the benefit of your practice, and you still have time, given the one-year delay of ICD-10 compliance implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to provide health-care providers with additional time to prepare.

If you are looking to upgrade, we strongly recommend you start today so you can have systems tested, in place and staff that are used to them well before October of next year. Contact us today to see how we can make the transition easy.