ICD-10 Begins in 5 Days: Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail
By - ICD-10 implementation – the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) – is less than one short week away, beginning on Thursday, October 1, 2015. RevCycleIntelligence.com recently chatted with Teri Jorwic, Professor of Healthcare Informatics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and ICD-10 Educator, to get a clearer sense of upcoming ICD-10 predictions and advice.
As RevCycleIntelligence.com reported, physicians may not benefit from an ICD-10 switch until some time has passed. A noted lack of physician confidence in ICD-10 endures with the possibility of physicians either closing their practices due to severe revenue cycle snags or having to put their own money back into their practices to make up for financial losses a harsh yet feasible impending reality.
Contrastingly, others predict because of numerous similarities with guidelines, structures, and uses between ICD-9 and ICD-10, merely a “very small” productivity loss can be expected come October.
States Jorwic, “It would be naïve to think there aren't going to be any bumps along the road. But in time things will smooth out." In light of previous ICD-10 delays, people cannot really be blamed for saying, 'Well, let’s see what happens,'” she comments.
Confidence in the change, she says, is essential. “Folks that have been preparing for this the most – whether training in the coding system or looking at how it's going to affect their billing cycle – will probably have the least amount of trouble,” she adds.
“For hospitals, the challenge is going to be more of the procedure coding system, the procedure coding system, PCS, rather than the ICD-10-CM, the diagnosis coding – which everyone has to use,” Jorwic states. “There's more of the same than is different in the diagnosis coding system, whereas with the procedure coding, it's a completely new world. Until we start using the system for coding the inpatient procedures, we're not going to know what it is we're up against.”
“Using the few days that we have left to try to get things in order as much as we can is really the best advice. And even after implementation, starting to find out what those gaps are and where we need more help in terms of training and terms of processes,” says Jorwic. “The biggest area we will need more training in is probably that procedure coding side for the inpatients rather than the diagnosis coding for everybody,” she adds.
“It’s actually going to happen this time, and I personally am very excited about it. It’s not going to be without its bumps, but for goodness' sake, since 1979, it's time for a change!” she confirms. Referencing the words of Benjamin Franklin, Jorwic concludes, "By failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail.”
