ICD-10 & Coding
We love the prospect of a new year ahead - 365 new days. It's just a calendar, of course, a tool for ordering days, setting meetings, making appointments and remembering birthdays. But as we move from the last day of one year to the first day of the next, our Outlook and Google calendars seem so much more than a way to schedule yet more tasks, more appointments, more projects and more deadlines.
The Department of Health and Human Services' August decision finalizing a one-year delay for ICD-10 has given providers additional time to make the necessary preparations for the switch, and, according to a KLAS report released Monday, the majority of providers plan to use a third-party firm to help get them there.
A long, long time ago, way back in 2007, "presidential candidates in both parties were pledging to boost health IT," writes TIME magazine reporter Michael Grunwald in his book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era (Simon & Schuster). "Several bipartisan bills were floating around Congress, and Hillary and Newt Gingrich were both hailing electronic medicine as the future of healthcare."
Healthcare IT News Associate Editor Erin McCann talks with Stephen Beck, MD, CMIO of Catholic Health Partners in Cincinnati, Ohio.
After one year at the helm of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), Susan Turney, MD, is presiding over nothing short of a reinvention for medical practices across the nation. She talked with Healthcare IT News about the promise and the difficulties practices face as they shape a new model.
Become "pioneers" in health information management, Wil Yu urged the audience at his keynote speech Oct. 2 at AHIMA's 84th Annual Convention and Exhibit.
The added work anticipated from meaningful use requirements, the pressure to achieve data sharing and the clock ticking toward the 2014 deadline for conversion of diagnostic and medical billing codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets has driven the demand for consultants, creating what some call a boom.
An Aug. 24 decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to delay the ICD-10 compliance date one year has some providers in a haze, where they're left deciphering the often-encrypted implications of the pushback.
An idea can change a lot over eight years and while the intent of interoperability remains essentially the same, its application has split off in various directions since 2004, when the Bush administration called for establishment of electronic health records, universal connectivity between healthcare providers and named David Brailer, MD, as national health information technology coordinator.
The new ICD-10 deadline of October 1, 2014 is a mere two years away. That doesn't leave a lot of time for healthcare organizations to meet the mandate, particularly those who have not yet even started the conversion. One expert offers some tips for making smart use of the extra year.