Countdown to ICD-10 Implementation: August’s Top 4 Roundup
By - The one-month countdown to ICD-10 implementation is here as calendars officially hit the September 1 mark. As the ongoing effort to educate the healthcare industry on all matters of ICD-10 implementation news, updates, and insights continues, here is a collection of selected top 4 August ICD-10 highlights, as reported by RevCycleIntelligence.com.
Slavitt, leading CMS/AHA/AHIMA officials run ICD-10 Q&A
As RevCycleIntelligence.com reported last week, the primary objective of last week’s “Countdown to ICD-10” MLN Connects National Provider Call was to help prepare and educate the healthcare industry and answer a wide range of ICD-10 questions from those including healthcare providers and payers.
Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), opened the call by confirming the naming of an ombudsman, William Rogers, MD, CMS’s Director of the Physicians Regulatory Issues Team. Slavitt confirmed he will be closely glued to all matters of ICD-10 news.
Other officials from CMS, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), and the American Hospital Association (AHA) led a Q&A session to help clarify general ICD-10 confusion across the healthcare spectrum. As reported yesterday regarding the complete Q&A breakdown, a summary of the questions asked is as follows:
- Request for available tools radiologists can use to address specificity issues
- Clarification regarding how initial A and subsequent B encounter codes relate to physical and occupational therapy
- Clarification about what defines “active treatment”
- Whether or not an incorrect diagnosis code warrants a message back to the EOB
- Confusion about CPT codes and not being able to differentiate between diagnosis codes
- What CMS anticipates in terms of the expected turnaround for claims reimbursement delays
- When to use ICD-9 and ICD-10 regarding discharge dates past October 1
- Confirmation about the use of “x” placeholders
- What physician forms to use post-transition
- Laterality and billing concerns within a family of codes
Officials ended the call by bluntly acknowledging numerous ICD-10 misunderstandings are indeed anticipated come October. How exactly such will be managed and minimized perhaps remains unclear.
WEDI demands HHS advocate for ICD-10 compliancy
As RevCycleIntelligence.com reported in early August, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) penned a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Sylvia M. Burwell, asking HHS “to continue to leverage its communication channels to promote the need for compliance because of the impact that non-compliance could have on the industry.” Less than half of physicians confirm they will be ready for ICD-10 come October, according to highlights from WEDI's ICD-10 survey. WEDI urged HHS to quickly provide complete transparency regarding Medicaid agencies’ and states’ readiness levels.
CMS announcement summary, AHA’s homestretch checklist released
CMS recently announced a series of clinical coding reference guides – essentially known as ICD-10 “cheat sheets” highlighting the most commonly utilized clinical concepts and their efficient pairings with corresponding ICD-10 codes. CMS additionally made a series of revisions to its ICD-10 FAQ list for billable code clarification.
CMS’s Road to Ten ICD-10 preparation resource package explains common ICD-10 codes and those involving more detailed laterality, clinical scenarios, and clinical documentation tips and guides for family practice, internal medicine, cardiology, OB/GYN, pediatrics, etc. As reported in mid-August, CMS sought to clarify other related ICD-10 questions about topics such as claims reimbursement and Medicare testing opportunities. Additionally CMS confirmed only last week that the latest round of Medicare fee-for-service end-to-end-testing was successful, with nearly 9 in 10 claims accepted.
Regarding similar efforts, the AHA released a detailed "ICD-10 Homestretch Checklist" to help hospital leaders finalize their ICD-10 action plans come October 1. AHA recommended hospital leaders embrace a tri-fold objective of checking their internal systems, verifying external partner readiness, and considering financial protections.
As an additional resource, RevCycleIntelligence.com explained three tips last month to help amp up healthcare providers’ overall ICD-10 productivity levels in regard to training efforts, hiring considerations, and the utilization of computer-assisted (CAC) coding methods.
New data verifies ICD-10’s negative monsoon-like impact
As RevCycleIntelligence.com reported in early-August, many of the nearly 35,000 practicing radiologists actively rely on physicians’ diagnostic information. New research from the Journal of the American College of Radiology confirmed radiologists’ ICD-10 codes will increase by nearly six-fold with simply “enormous” technological, operational, and financial implications. Code familiarity should, therefore, be of top priority for radiologists, confirmed the reports’ authors, who advised healthcare practices to openly focus on where ICD-10 implementation may hit the hardest come October 1.
New data confirms physicians severely lack ICD-10 confidence, as RevCycleIntelligence.com reported a week later. If ICD-10 is indeed as severely financially disastrous as has been anticipated, a high amount of claims disruptions and claim denials may cause physicians to retire early or terminate and renegotiate their plan contracts. Additionally, some physicians expect the ICD-10 aftermath will be so financially dire, they plan to use personal funds to keep their practice operations running smoothly once October 1 hits. Sixty-five percent of physicians confirmed “little to no confidence” in ICD-10 preparation levels.
As September continues onwards, future announcements and updates, some tied to the old and some brand new, will certainly come to the forefront soon as ICD-10 efforts continue, full steam ahead.
