It appears as if the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has set its new ICD-10 compliance date, Health Data Management has reported.
Buried deep in the proposed Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems rule made available April 30, the agency, in a request for public comment on ICD-10-CM/PCS Transition, states, "The ICD-10-CM /PCS transition is scheduled to take place on October 1, 2015. After that date, we will collect nonelectronic health record-based quality measure data coded only in ICD-10-CM/PCS."
ICD-10 was delayed for the second time in nearly two years early last month when President Obama signed the Protecting Access to Medicare Act into law. The legislation mandated that ICD-10 could not be adopted prior to Oct. 1, 2015, and also implemented a 12-month patch to the sustainable growth rate payment formula that prevented deep Medicare payment cuts for physicians.
A coalition that includes the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the American Health Information Management Association recently called on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services to ensure that the ICD-10 delay did not extend past October 2015.
"The enormous investment that is being made in accountable care organizations, Meaningful Use of electronic health records and value-based purchasing are all predicated on having a more precise and comprehensive diagnosis and procedure coding system that is up to date with the rapid changes in practices and technologies utilized in today's healthcare system," the group, dubbed the Coalition for ICD-10, wrote in a letter.
AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon said that the lack of a firm date made preparation "extraordinarily difficult," in a statement accompanying the letter.
To learn more:
- read the Heath Data Management article