Oct. 1, 2015 date nailed down for ICD-10
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finally issued a rule finalizing Oct. 1, 2015, as the new compliance date for healthcare providers, health plans and healthcare clearinghouses to transition to ICD-10. This marks the second one-year delay for the ICD-10 transition.
“ICD-10 codes will provide better support for patient care and improve disease management, quality measurement and analytics,” said Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). “For patients under the care of multiple providers, ICD-10 can help promote care coordination.”
Because of the greater specificity of ICD-10--ICD-9 has less than 20,000 codes compared with more than 100,000 codes in ICD-10--it's expected that clinicians can use the codes to better understand patients' health details and researchers and public health officials will be better abel to track diseases and health outcomes. The previous revision, ICD-9-CM, contains outdated, obsolete terms that are inconsistent with current medical practice, new technology and preventive services, according to a release.
The healthcare industry already has invested resources toward the implementation of ICD-10 and CMS has implemented end-to-end testing to help providers prepare.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.