The newer forms will, by necessity, be far more comprehensive and complex than the older forms. Have you begun to modify your templates? Remember to update your forms and superbills. When it is complete, you then need to know whether your vendor(s) will provide training for your practice, and if so, what the training will cost. What is your vendor(s’) timeline for implementation, and when will they allow you to test your system? You will need to know when the upgrade to your existing system will be complete or the entirely new system will be available. Will the upgrade to the new system involve a fee? If so, how much will that cost? Will your vendor(s)provide the codes at no cost? How difficult was it to resolve any problems? What did it cost you in time, lost productivity, staffing, and overtime to “catch up” from having your system down for maintenance and upgrades? Ask yourself what responses and issues you faced with your current practice management software vendor/customer support. Review the problems your practice has experienced in the past 2 years and how they affected your practice and cash flow. Will your current practice management system accommodate the change, or will you require a new system? Choose a software package that will accommodate the necessary changes. Use the following questions as a guide through this process.Īre your contracts with payers ready for the move? You may need to review and update these contracts to pave the way for the move to ICD-10. Examine the systems, vendor contracts, and costs for both your electronic health records (EHRs) and practice management systems. The newly provided codes were designed to ensure that the collected data reflect patients’ conditions more precisely, decrease claims rejections, and improve the benchmarking of data and public health records. Now is also the time for the staff to review the practice’s current procedures and improve upon them, making them more efficient and cost-effective. Modify your software and upgrade your hardware.If you have not already done so, you should take the following steps as soon as possible: By now, you should have a steering committee in place or have devised a communication schedule involving everyone in your practice who will play a role in implementing the new coding system. The new codes will be structurally different from the ICD-9 codes (Table 1 and Table 2). Once ICD-10-CM goes into effect, any transactions that are not compliant with HIPAA (ie, not using ANSI v5010) will be rejected. ANSI v5010 replaced the electronic transaction standards ANSI v4010/v4010A. You may recall that the implementation of a new generation of the 9 electronic standards for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), known as the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Version 5010 (v5010), is a part of this process. The shift from International Classificatin of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) involves serious challenges, including transitioning from a system of 13,000 codes to a system of more than 68,000 codes in ICD-10-CM. If you are behind schedule, you need to work hard now to catch up. Your practice should already have completed the impact assessment. The timeline for implementing the code sets is divided into 4 phases: Phase 1: Impact Assessment, first quarter 2009 through second quarter 2012 Phase 2: Preparing for Implementation, first quarter 2012 through second quarter 2014 Phase 3: Go Live Preparation, first quarter 2013 through third quarter 2014 and Phase 4: Post Implementation, fourth quarter 2014 through fourth quarter 2015. The reprieve, although welcome to many, is less than 17 months away, during which several phases of implementation must be completed. On October 1, 2014, the United States will adopt the International Classification of Disease, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification/Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-CM/PCS), 1 year later than we had initially reported in Urology Practice Management in September 2012.
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