AMA still not sold on ICD-10

The American Medical Association is holding firm in its opposition to the mandatory implementation of ICD-10, as evidenced by a preliminary report of actions recorded at its interim meeting in Honolulu last week. Meeting attendees resolved that implementation of the code set, which in late August was delayed by a year from Oct. 1, 2013 to Oct. 1, 2014, would place a tremendous burden on small practice physicians, and could even cause some to go out of business.

Some attendees even kicked around the idea of eliminating ICD-10, and instead simply waiting for and adopting ICD-11 in October 2017. That idea, however, was met with pushback, as some saw it as a potential "blanket endorsement" of ICD-11.

"Many passionately expressed their belief that implementation of ICD-10 coding will create unnecessary and significant financial workflow disruptions for physicians, especially at a time when physicians are in various stages of trying to implement electronic health records into their practices," the report says.

According to an EHR Intelligence article, the estimated financial burden for each physician will be roughly $80,000.

In May, AMA called for a two-year delay of ICD-10 to Oct. 1, 2015, a stance that was reiterated when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services officially announced the one-year delay. In June, AMA announced that it was going to evaluate preliminary versions of ICD-11 to replace ICD-9.

To learn more:
- read the meeting's report (.pdf)
- here's the EHR Intelligence article