Preparedness for ICD-10 appears to be across the board. The latest CMS end-to-end testing week in April indicated 88 percent of test claims were accepted, but a February survey from billing and payment software developer Navicure found just 21 percent of physician practices are on track to be in compliance with the coding change.
Bill Reid, senior vice president of product management and partners at SCI Solutions, suggests health systems should lend a hand to physician practices to help bring them up to speed in anticipation of the October 1 transition date.
In a piece for ICD 10 Monitor, Mr. Reid says if physician providers aren't ready for the transition, it will affect the larger health systems they do business with as well. Such risks include clinical neutrality and maintaining the same characteristics for patient care, financial integrity and ensuring claim payments remain approximately the same and structural organization including people, processes and technology, he writes.
Mr. Reid suggests systems and physician practices create "crosswalks" to covert commonly used ICD-9 codes to their equivalent ICD-10 codes, perhaps through cloud-based care management tools.
"These electronic bridges help automate and simplify the first mile of the patient access experience and make it as easy as possible for community physicians to send in accurate orders and referrals, with the correct codes being used from the start of that workflow," Mr. Reid writes.
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