Gear Up Your Ambulatory Surgical Center for ICD-10

Deferring your ambulatory surgical center ICD-10 learning for a later date? Well, CMS thinks it's high time you took your preparation seriously. The ICD-10 implementation does not mean you just need to get yourself a new coding manual; it includes changes that should be started as soon as possible.

There's no denying that a lot of practices have tucked ICD-10 preparedness into the back of their minds, CMS wants to keep it on the forefront of yours. Keeping this in mind, the agency has come up with a free service that allows you to get an email notification whenever the information on its ICD-10 page gets updated. So the next time the agency announces an ICD-10 webinar, transcript, article or tip sheet, you will get instant notification via email.

The site had some time back posted an executive summary of its ICD-10 vendor conference where vendors told the agency that they have implemented plans in place for both Version 5010 and ICD-10 and are quite sure that they can meet the implementation guidelines. However vendors did show their concern that there is no testing period for ICD-10 prior to October 1, 2013 deadline.

In this direction, vendors were keen on listening to what the payers are doing to get ready for ICD-10 as any mistake on the part of the MAC could slow payments to practices.

In addition, vendors noted that medical providers, more particularly those in small to mid-sized practices – are not training eyes on ICD-10 as yet; but then the vendors think that providers should get ready for the transition because if you don't comply, you'll not get your rightful reimbursements.

Remember: While training your ambulatory surgical center staff working with diagnosis coding in any form, consider the following:

Key players – be it physicians, business office support-coders, billers, collections/denials)

Extent of training

Method of training

Continuing education

For more ways to keep your ambulatory surgical center up to date with ICD-10 and for other ASC coding updates, sign up for a one-stop medical coding guide like Supercoder. Such a site comes with a tool - ASC Authority – to help you keep your ambulatory surgical center compliant and capturing all allowed procedures.

ASC authority features more than 20 details of HCPCS codes, Ambulatory Payment Classification codes, and Fee Schedule facts all in one page. To top it all, the ICD-10 Bridge will help your ambulatory surgical center make the right transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10.