AMA votes to mandate two-year ICD-10/11 implementation period

The American Medical Association (AMA) has again protested the looming Oct. 1, 2014, compliance date for ICD-10.

At its annual meeting in Chicago in mid-June, association delegates voted to mandate a two-year implementation period for ICD-10/11. The issue was one of many policy decisions the AMA delegates tackled at the event.

The organization also voted that insurers would not be allowed to deny payment based on the specificity of an ICD-10/11 diagnosis during that two-year implementation period. However, payers would be required to give physicians feedback on incorrect diagnoses.

The move gives “our members time to get used to the sticker shock” of ICD-10, said Reid B. Blackwelder, MD, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians, according to AMA’s publication, American Medical News.

“We should not allow payers to find loopholes to not pay us for services we provide under contract,” said M. Eugene Sherman, MD, an alternate delegate for the American College of Cardiology and a cardiovascular disease specialist from Englewood, Colo., according to the publication.

The vote contradicts a recent recommendation from AMA board of trustees, which in a report had advised against combining implementation of ICD-10 and ICD-11.