Delay to ICD-10 Billing Coming October 2015
The Senate voted today, (March 31st) to delay the switch to ICD-10 billing codes to October 2015. This is just a short delay to the industry’s inevitable transition away from the 30-year old ICD-9 to ICD-10. ICD-10 is coming and Welter Healthcare Partners, Inc. is pulling out all the stops to help our clients prepare for it and be successful.nnICD-10 is a richer data set allowing for more data to be used and transmitted. It will absolutely help the industry document care, document what treatments and modalty’s work and how well they work. It will allow providers to better describe their services and why they are necessary. ICD-10 will also help tremendously as we continue to transition away from a fee-for-service system of reimbursement to a quality and outcomes based reimbursement system like physician centric bundled or episodic payments. We are excited about ICD-10 and the opportunity it will bring to our clients and the industry.nnWe encourage providers and practices to continue any training efforts already started, as the clinical documentation improvement process and getting your staff proficient with ICD-10 can take time! Take advantage of being ahead of the game! If you haven’t started, we encourage you to do so as this is a huge transition and being fully prepared is the only way to prevent productivity and revenue loss!
The 2014 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) final rule stipulated a negative update to the MPFS that was to be effective January 1, 2014. That reduction was averted for three months with the passage of the Pathway for SGR Reform Act of 2013, which provided for a 0.5 percent update for services paid under the MPFS through March 31, 2014.nnCMS is hopeful that there will be congressional action to prevent the negative update from taking effect on April 1, 2014. CMS has instructed the Medicare Administrative Contractors to hold claims containing services paid under the MPFS for the first 10 business days of April (i.e., through April 14, 2014). This hold would only affect MPFS claims with dates of service of April 1, 2014, and later. The hold should have minimal impact on provider cash flow, because under current law, clean electronic claims are not paid any sooner than 14 calendar days (29 days for paper claims) after the date of receipt. All claims for services delivered on or before March 31, 2014, will be processed and paid under normal procedures, regardless of any Congressional actions.
Z73.1 — Type A behavior patternnnZ73.2 — Lack of relaxation and leisurennZ73.3 — Stress, not elsewhere classifiednnIn preparation for the upcoming deadline for ICD-10 implementation, Welter Healthcare Partners presents weekly ICD-10 Codes of the Week! Our goal is to familiarize you with the new and expanded code set and the additional clinical documentation needed from your providers to comply with ICD-10 coding, and more importantly, for accurate and clean claims submission to keep your revenue stream flowing! We are to help YOU prepare for the October 1, 2014 implementation date. Please don’t hesitate to 
If you’re still banking on an ICD-10 delay, you might want to prepare yourself for yet another disappointment. At HIMSS14 last week, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner stated once again that no such postponement is in the cards, and providers either need to get ready or prepare to stop getting paid. “There are no more delays and the system will go live on October 1,” Tavenner said during her keynote address to attendees of the conference in Orlando, Florida. “Let’s face it guys, we’ve delayed this several times and it’s time to move on.”nnThe deadline has many stakeholders worried about the impact of the hard cut-over from ICD-9 to ICD-10, with some vendors still developing ICD-10 compliant products and many providers and payers deeply concerned about inadequate testing procedures before the new code set goes live. While the Medicare testing week is taking place as we speak, and CMS recently announced a limited end-to-end pilot for some sample providers, the generally lackluster effort to engage the industry in testing has a number of experts on edge.nnAmong the most vocal about the upcoming doomsday is the American Medical Association, which has been advocating for an indefinite postponement of the new codes. In response to Tavenner’s latest remarks, AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, said, “Many physicians are still waiting for their vendors to deliver updated software they need to use the ICD-10 codes. The later physicians receive this software, the harder it will become to test it out before the October 1ICD-10 deadline.”nn“Testing is needed to discover problems and resolve them prior to the go live date. The slightest glitch in the ICD-10 rollout could potentially cause a billion dollar back-log of medical claims that jeopardizes physician practices and disrupts patients’ access to care,” Hoven continued in a public statement. “The AMA is deeply concerned that Medicare does not have a back-up plan if last minute testing demonstrates anticipated problems with this massive coding transition. At the end of the day sticking hard and fast to the ICD-10 deadline without a back-up plan to address disruptions in medical claims processing will hurt doctors and their patients.”nnTo help providers overcome the big hurdles standing between them and ICD-10 success, CMS has released a flurry of transition tools, such as detailed end-to-end preparation checklists and resources from its eHealth University. Educational sessions at HIMSS14, including a Q&A presentation by the HIMSS ICD-10 Taskforce, also attempted to prepare providers for the upcoming changes.nnTavenner’s assertion is the latest in a series of CMS statements reaffirming the October 1 transition date. As early as August of 2013, Pat Brooks, RHIA, Senior Technical Advisor at CMS, warned providers that there would be no extensions, and urged the industry to listen. “There will be no more delays,” she said during a National Provider Call. “Those who are postponing ICD-10 implementation planning, thinking there might be additional delays, should really begin to plan implementation now. There will be no more delays to the ICD-10 implementation date.”nnSource: www.ehrintelligence.com; Jennifer Bresnick; March 4, 2014.
This ICD-10 Coffee Klatch webinar is an informative review and excellent starting point for physician and hospital coders. Ms. Toni Woods and Ms. Whitney Horton, both AHIMA-Approved ICD-10-CM/PCS Trainers, will give viewers a glimpse of Welter Healthcare Partners’s formal ICD-10 Coder Academies and training, and provide an overview of ICD-10 Coding Conventions, Chapter Guidelines, Code Structures and an introduction to the 31 root operations in the Medical and Surgical sections of ICD-10-PCS.nn
Welter Healthcare Partners is proud to announce the addition of a webinar offering of the ICD-10 Coder Academy! nnThis session will take place July 8–10, 2014 with the registration deadline being May 30th. Registered Participants will have webinar training details emailed to them 72 hours prior to the training. Participant Training Books will be shipped 2 weeks before training. Please provide the address of where books should be shipped on the registration form.nnThis interactive and hands-on ICD-10 training is designed to prepare coders for the AAPC and AHIMA ICD-10 proficiency examinations. Participants will gain the tools they need to appropriately select ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes. These training sessions will be coder centric, and the content will be designed for those staff who will be responsible for applying (or verifying) these codes to documentation. Throughout the academy, participants will be given an assortment of scenarios to code to obtain the proficiency they need for coding in ICD-10.nnParticipants only needing ICD-10-CM training (physician and outpatient coding) should register for the first day of the academy only (Day 1).nnParticipants needing ICD-10-PCS training (hospital/inpatient coding) will need to register for the entire 3-day academy.n