Physicians have reason to question the timing and value of ICD-10 as they have many competing priorities due to a multitude of concurrent regulatory, technology and industry changes. Many see ICD-10 as “salt in the wound.” However, ICD-10 offers potential value to physicians if leveraged and utilized correctly. Physicians who take decisive steps to fully integrate ICD-10 into their clinical practice stand to benefit in several ways.nnSo, yes, ICD-10 implementation is an investment in time, but it presents physicians with five benefits that have the potential to be major game-changers.n
1. Grow compensation and reimbursement.
nICD-9 codes were not originally developed with reimbursement in mind. ICD-10, however, offers a more decisive system to determine payments by offering greater detail on the quality of the care provided. In turn, government payers, insurers, hospitals, health systems, medical groups and others will use ICD-10’s granular data to determine accurate and fair physician compensation and reimbursement for goods and services.nnSome hospital systems with employed physicians have been offering compensation plans based on performance for several years. For example, Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa., has a pay- for-performance (P4P) program that bases 40 percent of incentive payments on quality goals (Cheung- Larivee, 2012). The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation recently announced that more than 3,500 employee physicians will receive bonus payments tied to meeting quality measures, such as lower readmission rates (Caramenico, 2013). With the arrival of ICD-10, quality incentives are in jeopardy if the physician does not document to the level needed to attain the correct and more specific code selection. This is because the code is a reflection of how severely ill that patient was, and a sub-optimal code in ICD-10 will not provide support on why a certain amount of care was needed.nn
Under the government’s Value-Based-Purchasing program, physicians who do not provide precise documentation (e.g., laterality, specificity, anatomic site, etc.) to support the specificity of ICD-10 will experience reduced payments. On the other hand, it is important to note that ICD-10 does not require a change in how physicians practice medicine or treat patients. Rather, it demands more accurate documentation and gives physicians more diagnostic choices to capture new data to ensure they are paid for the complex work they perform.nnAnother example is documentation and payment on new and cutting-edge procedures. New procedures are problematic for coding purposes. In both CPT and Volume 3 of ICD-9, they are often given an unlisted procedure or an unspecified code. With ICD-10-PCS (Procedure Coding System), which will be used for inpatient procedures, the codes are going to be created based on the surgeon’s documentation in the operative report. The code will be built based on the type of surgery, body system, root operation, body part, approach, device and any qualifiers that the surgeon includes in the documentation. So, for inpatient procedures, there are no limitations in code selection because ICD-10-PCS codes accurately reflect the goal, the location, and the steps of each procedure without the restrictions of procedural naming conventions and agreed-upon methodology. Often new procedure codes were not covered by government or private payers, according to an ICD-10 RAND report (Libicki & Brahmakulam, 2004). The upshot: payers may cover more procedures, reject less, pay faster and reimburse more accurately.nnClick Here To Read Moren
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nSource: www.physbiztech.com; Tom Ormondroyd; July 17, 2013.