Physician practices optimistic they'll be ready for ICD-10

While few physician practices feel they are currently on track with their preparations for the transition to ICD-10, a survey shows that most are still generally optimistic they will be ready when the Oct. 1 deadline hits.

The “Physician Practice ICD-10 Readiness Survey” is the third survey carried out by Navicure, in conjunction with Porter Research. Navicure is a cloud-based billing and payment solutions provider.

Survey participants included practice administrators or billing managers (57 percent), practice executives (13 percent) and billers and coders (14 percent).

The majority of respondents (81 percent) are optimistic they will be ready when the transition to ICD-10 occurs, even though just 21 percent think they are currently “on track” in their preparations. About 30 percent have started implementing ICD-10, but those efforts stalled when the ICD-10 implementation date was delayed from October 2014 to October of this year. Another 14 percent have begun preparing for the transition, but don’t think their efforts are currently on track, while 15 percent haven’t even begun their preparations.

When those respondents whose practices haven’t started preparing for ICD-10 were asked why this is the case, 25 percent said they are waiting for their practice management or EMR vendor to provide ICD-10 software updates. Thirty percent said they believe the ICD-10 deadline will be delayed once more or they still have enough time to prepare before the Oct. 1 deadline, while 23 percent said they don’t have the time, staff or resources to begin preparing.

As far as respondents’ concerns about the transition to ICD-10, the majority (59 percent) said that its impact on revenue and/or cash flow is their greatest concern. Twelve percent said their biggest concern is staff productivity, while 11 percent are worried that ICD-10 will be delayed again.

When asked what the biggest challenge to their practices will be during the ICD-10 transition, 41 percent of survey respondents identified payer readiness, while 33 percent said staff training.

Among key action items identified by Navicure was a recommendation that practices make sure they have plans in place to mitigate any disruptions to cash flow. “Historically, there has been a lack of payer preparedness with other industry transitions,“ Navicure warned, and urged practices to avoid cash flow and productivity losses by the improving their revenue cycle processes in advance of the transition.