Make Your Doctors ICD-10 Ready

Where have you reached as far as your ICD-10 preparation is concerned? If you're still lagging behind, it's time you geared yourself up for it because irrespective of where you work (hospital, ambulatory surgical center, physician practice, clinic, etc), the ICD-10 deadline applies to you.

D-Day: Oct. 1, 2013 will be the date that everyone will begin to use ICD-10. After this date, CMS will not accept ICD-9 codes for any dates of service on or after Oct. 1, 2013; however the agency will continue to process claims for services prior to that date for a still-unannounced period of time.

Transition: The more familiar you are with the changes, the easier the transition will be. Even though you should not start your intensive, in-depth ICD-10 training until six to nine months prior to implementation, you can gear yourself up in other ways now. Obtain education and understand early on so that you will be well equipped.

Gear up your doctors:

Popular thinking: One of the major worries pertaining to ICD-10 is the increased number of codes making the new system impossible to use. However, the truth that it should not be the case. While your physician's documentation will need to be detailed and clear, the diagnosis code set will not be more difficult to use. Presently, the agency publishes about 14,000 ICD-9 codes, but there will be over 69,000 ICD-10 codes. The additional codes will allow you to give more detail in describing diagnoses and procedures. Since ICD-10 codes will often be more detailed and specific than the ICD-9 codes you and your surgeon are used to, you may need to persuade your physician to start being more detailed in his documentation.

ICD-10 will need some improvement in physician documentation; the higher the quality of your documentation now, the easier it'll be to stay away from unspecified codes, and the quicker you will find the accurate ICD-10 code. Begin by speaking with your doctors now about improving their clinical documentation detail which will be the most important aspect for them and should be started prior to the change. With the increased granularity of ICD-10 code descriptions, payers may make use of this opportunity to develop increased pay for performance incentives and more specific medical necessity requirements that were not possible earlier. In this direction, accurate and specific code selections will be required however only possible if physicians have improved their ability to pain a clear and more detailed picture of the patient's clinical conditions.