Despite all the grumbling about the switch to ICD-10, physicians find it more natural to the way they practice, Sue Bowman, senior director of coding policy and compliance at the American Health Information Management Association, said in an interview at Healthcare Informatics.
The reason for that is the code has been developed from within the industry, she said.
"[A] lot of the specificity we've added is not new diseases; it's specific details about anatomy; but a significant percentage is around laterality--left or right side. If you can code broken left arm or broken right arm, that doubles the number of codes right there; but it doesn't add to the complexity of the system. Indeed, it provides clinical clarity that speaks to patient safety," she said.
While many organizations have been unhappy with the delayed deadline, saying it rewards those who didn't prepare, Bowman advocates keeping sight on the goal of obtaining better data for uses such as identifying global health threats.
Physicians shouldn't fear ICD-10 because they'll generally only deal with a small subset of codes in their area of practice, according to Bowman. She uses the example of asthma--ICD-10 ditches old terminology in favor of more commonly used vocabulary.
Preparation for ICD-10 also has had its upsides, she said in the interview.
"[W]hen you talk about the impact of ICD-10 on coding accuracy, then you discover that actually, ICD-9 coding wasn't optimal to begin with, so the training is helping to strengthen core coding principles and practices. And some people going through ICD-10 coding training may never have had formal ICD-9 coding training," she said.
The codes are being used in myriad ways, according to Bowman, including disease management programs, where they use ICD-9 codes to identify patients; for registration and payer eligibility; and even as identification in OR scheduling systems.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently announced three weeks of ICD-10 testing to check providers' technical readiness as well as boost their confidence.
After multiple delays, many physicians have not taken advantage of the extra time to get ready. In one recent survey, just 11 percent of healthcare organizations said they are fully ready to implement the new coding system. Experts and consultants have been warning those who are ready not to lose momentum, but to continue training and documentation improvement efforts.
To learn more:
- read the article