Some Fear Fallout from ICD-10 Postponement

Not all have welcomed the postponement of the implementation of ICD-10, the upgrade to the medical coding set currently in use in the U.S. A survey from Edifecs, which develops technologies for regulatory compliance and data exchange, shows that a majority of its respondents said that the ICD-10 postponement does little to improve industry readiness--and can have significant bad effects.

ICD-10 was to debut in the U.S. on Oct. 1, 2013, but its implementation was pushed back to a yet-unspecified date. Medical facilities and medical practices—as well as providers of medical billing and coding training—all over the country had been scrambling to get ready for ICD-10, and many complained that they might not have enough time to complete their preparations.

The survey canvassed over 50 senior healthcare professionals attending the 2012 ICD-10 Summit, a conference hosted by Edifecs. Some of its major findings are: nearly 64 percent of the respondents believed a delay does not improve readiness; 69 percent said a two-year delay is either “potentially catastrophic” or “unrecoverable;” and 76 percent believed a delay harms other healthcare reform efforts.

Cost was a big concern among the respondents. In answer to a question about the impact of a one-year delay, almost 50 percent said it would increase costs between 11 and 25 percent; 37 percent estimated their costs would balloon to 50 percent.
“The survey results tell us that stopping or slowing down work is a very real outcome of a delay, and it could derail a healthcare organization’s progress. The cost implications alone are worrisome,” said Edifecs CEO Sunny Singh.

The reaction by the health IT community to HHS’s postponement of the ICD-10 implementation has been a mixed bag, with many leaders fearing that the delay could disrupt their health IT plans and cause the time and money they have already spent to meet the original October 1, 2013 deadline to go to waste.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) asked that HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius act decisively when she takes the next steps that will guide the health IT community migrate from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets. "We strongly urge HHS to move quickly and decisively in setting a new compliance date for converting to ICD-10," CHIME president and CEO Richard Correll exhorted in a letter to Sebelius.

"Providers have spent millions preparing for a deadline set over three years in advance. Technology has been upgraded, new processes implemented, new hires made, and new education and training regimes established. This announcement has created a level of uncertainty that threatens much of the progress already made by many hospitals and clinics across the country," Correll added.

Meditec.com, like other providers of medical billing and coding training—as well as medical transcription training and pharmacy technician classes—provides the coursework the medical coding community needs to be ready for ICD-10.