ICD-10 Spurs Medical Billing and Coding Training

The gears are engaged and the wheels are turning for the implementation on Oct. 1, 2013 of ICD-10, otherwise known as the International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition, the “bible” that all medical coders need to follow in diagnosis coding and reporting. And despite urgent appeals by the American Medical Association (AMA) to Congress to stop the implementation of ICD-10, updates of ICD-9 (the current and soon-to-be-replaced code manual) have for all intents and purposes, stopped.

Once ICD-10 is phased in, coders will not only need to master a much wider medical terminology, but will also have to work more closely with doctors on the new codes. Significantly, medical billing and coding training will need to be updated for many schools.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is already focused on ICD-10 and just recently, under authorization by the World Health Organization (WHO), it updated its ICD-10-CM Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting for 2012.

The proximity of the changeover has medical coders scrambling for medical billing and coding training and resources, and training institutions such as Meditec.com are more than happy to provide the coursework.
However, all’s not well with the transition.

The American Medical Association (AMA) is strongly urging Congress to stop the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's implementation of the ICD-10 code set. The appeal, contained in a letter, also urged the lawmakers to call on stakeholders to find a replacement for ICD-9, the current code set.

Once implemented, ICD-10 will require doctors and their office staff to deal with a staggering 68,000 codes, five times more than the current 13,000 codes of ICD-9.
AMA contended in no uncertain terms in its letter that ICD-10 is devoid of any direct benefit to individual patient care and will only hugely burden medical practice. It also pointed out that the implementation will only compete with other expensive transitions involving quality and health information technology (IT) reporting programs.

In the letter, AMA CEO James L. Madara, MD, said that derailing ICD-10 and finding "an appropriate replacement for ICD-9 will help to keep adoption of [electronic health records] and physician participation in quality and health IT programs on track and reduce costly burdens on physician practices."

Whether AMA is right or not in its protest, the transition to ICD-10 is a major industry undertaking. Meditec.com, which also provides medical transcription training and pharmacy technician classes, offers medical billing and coding training to those who want to take advantage of this suddenly-much-in-demand career.