Most organizations at or below their ICD-10 budget

Most healthcare organizations are at or below budget for the transition to ICD-10, according to the early results of an ICD-10 readiness survey conducted by consulting firm The Advisory Board Company.

Nearly 95 percent of healthcare organizations report they are keeping to their ICD-10 budget and 77 percent say they have comprehensive budgets with specific line-item allocations. The Advisory Board Company, however, notes that "with six months still to go in the process and many tests yet to run, budgets are likely to change with last-minute enhancements" and "while organizations agree on maintaining a strict budget, there's no consensus regarding how to transition across systems."

The chief financial officer is most likely (56 percent) to be responsible for the shift to ICD-10, followed by the vice president of finance (16 percent) and chief information officer (15 percent), according to the survey.

While organizational leadership responsibilities are well defined, other areas of ICD-10 planning and preparation remain undecided.

Most (95 percent) respondents plan to code charts using both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes to prepare for the new system, but providers disagree on the percentage of charts to be dual coded and one-third say they don’t know. More than half (56 percent) of respondents say they have not renegotiated payer agreements to minimize risks associated with the transition.

"Most surprising, over 40 percent of respondents have not yet modeled the expected impact of the transition on accounts receivable (AR) days," The Advisory Board Company said in a release. "According to previous research, it will take months, not weeks, to restore AR to pre-ICD-10 levels, while spikes in discharged not final billed (DNFB) can significantly disrupt cash flow. This impact is compounded by the fact that 30 percent of organizations are not building up cash reserves to prepare for financial disruption."