Diana Manos, Senior Editor
Diana Manos is Senior Editor for Healthcare IT News. Located in Washington, D.C., she covers policy and legislation issues surrounding healthcare IT. Follow Diana on Twitter @DManos_IT_News.
ICD-10 deadline extended two years to 2013
WASHINGTON | February 2, 2009From the February 2009 print issue
The Department of Health and Human Services has extended the deadline for converting from the ICD-9 to ICD-10 disease and billing coding set by two years – from Oct. 1, 2011 to Oct. 1, 2013.
Industry insiders received the government announcement last month with mixed reaction – some breathed a sigh of relief, while others expressed disappointment at the delay.
“This further extension means more years without the data needed to make intelligent data-driven decisions related to all aspects of healthcare,” said Linda Kloss, American Health Information Management Association CEO. “Nonetheless, this extra time gives the industry no excuse for an adequate implementation and compliance.”
Reed E. Pew, CEO and president of the American Academy of Professional Coders, expressed the stance that several insurers and several physician groups, including the Medical Group Management Association, had taken with the proposed 2011 deadline.
“We believe this delay is a victory for providers, payers and coders and allows for a more efficient transition, giving the proper amount of time to implement system and coding changes without impacting the daily operations of practices, facilities and payers.”
ICD-9 contains 17,000 codes and is expected to start running out of available codes next year. The ICD-10 code sets contain more than 155,000 codes.
According to a study initiated by a broad group of provider organizations and conducted by Nachimson Advisors, the cost for a 10-physician practice to implement ICD-10 is estimated at more than $285,000.
The estimate includes the cost of training expenditures, new claim forms software, business process analysis, practice management and billing software upgrades, increases in claim inquiries and reduction in cash flow and increased documentation costs.
Officials from the American Academy of Professional Coders said the transition to ICD-10 will require doctors to learn a more extensive way of documenting their work, or they could face losing reimbursements.
“The increased granularity of the coding and the sharp increase in the complexity and number of codes themselves will be pretty stunning,” said Sheri Poe Bernard, head of the American Academy of Professional Coders’ national advisory board.
karunesh say: Principles & Practice Of ICD-10 Coding
The traditional emphasis in medical records management around the world has been on what data to get, and not on how to get it. The more efficient health information systems of today, however, are interested in what data to get, how to get it, and how to synthesize these data into an understanding of the patient's total situation. Disease classification and coding is the principal tool used by medical records personnel to accomplish this, and is, therefore a skill, which the effective healthcare managers, medical records administrators, clinical statisticians, statistical technicians, and medical transcriptionists also must master. This book is designed to present the principles that will help the learner to acquire or improve that skill. The roots of the book go back to the teaching of ICD coding to doctors, medical records personnel and statistical technicians at the Department of Statistics & Medical Records, Ministry of Health, Kuwait for over two decades. While teaching the principles and techniques of disease coding through various revisions of the ICD we came across many areas which were not within easy reach of our students, leading to frustration among them. This led us to bring out this comprehensive guidebook on ICD-10 coding with detailed explanations, suitable examples and appropriate coding exercises for better comprehension. The book is divided into eight units. Unit 1 provides an introduction to disease coding. Unit 2 gives a brief history of the development of ICD Units 3 and 4 deal with the main classification and alphabetic index of ICD-10. Unit 5 explains the principles and techniques of using ICD-10 and Unit 6 does this on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Units 7 and 8 consider the special features of morbidity and mortality coding. Unit 9 emphasizes the various aspects of statistical presentation in accordance with the WHO regulations. Care has been taken all through these units to keep the matter as simple as possible. Appropriate examples are provided wherever needed. Suitable exercises are presented at the end of each unit, which the students can take to test their level of comprehension before embarking on to the next unit. Many people have contributed to this final product. Of these, special mention should be made of Dr. Abdul Aziz Khalaf, Director of Statistics & Medical Records Department at the Ministry of Health, Kuwait for his continuous support and encouragement. We are deeply indebted to Miss Zahra Awadh who reviewe d most of the chapters and made many helpful contributions to both style and content; and to Mr. Mohamed Bader and Mrs. Jaya Umaputhiran for secretarial assistance. We are especially grateful to hundreds of doctors, medical records administrators and technicians, health statisticians, and ICD coders who participated in our training programmes and workshops on ICD in Kuwait and other countries during the past 25 years. We trust that these many colleagues will find our account of some small value.
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Practice-Dhirendra-Mohamed-El-Sayed/dp/...
About the Author
Dr. Dhirendra Verma received his Master's and Doctoral degrees from Canada's St. Mary's and Dalhousie Univeristy, respectively. He taught Anatomy & Physiology at the Faculty of Paramedical Sciences, Nova Scotia Institute of Technology, in Halifax for 16 years before joining Kuwait's Ministry of Health as a Specialist in Disease Classification & Coding. He also held the position of Administrative Director at two large hospitals of Kuwait. He has extensive experince of teaching ICD in several countries. His publications include over 45 research articles and four books, the most recent being A Concise Medical Dictionary for Healthcare Practitioners.
Dr. Ali M. El-Sayed holds an MD and MPH degree from the Alexandria University, Egypt. For several years he worked on the project Ecology of Trachoma in Rural Egypt before joining the Ministry of Health as a Medical Biostatistician & Specialist in Disease Coding, a job that he currently holds. Apart from coding and analyzing morbidity and mortality data for the State of Kuwait he has held periodic workshops and orientation programmes in Disease Coding at Kuwait and other Gulf countries. He has 30 publications to his credit, including an Arabic translation of ICD-9 (3-Digit Categories) and a Manual in Arabic on determinig the underlying cause of death, as per WHO norms.
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Practice-Dhirendra-Mohamed-El-Sayed/dp/...