If a recent analysis by the American Health Information Management Association is any indication, hospital ICD-10 implementation efforts are either non-existent or still in their infancy.
Published in the June edition of the Journal of AHIMA, the analysis--which focused on a survey of more than 300 HIM professionals representing 293 healthcare facilities--revealed that as of last fall, more than 50 percent of respondents were still in the beginning phases of ICD-10 implementation. What's more, one-fourth of respondents had yet to form an ICD-10 steering committee.
The analysis falls in line with other surveys published this year on ICD-10 implementation. For instance, a survey published in April by healthcare revenue IT vendor Health Revenue Assurance Holdings found that 20 percent of responding small- and mid-sized hospitals had yet to start any education or training for the shift. Healthcare consultants Aloft Group and the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) also have determined that the healthcare industry, by-and-large, is dragging its feet when it comes to the ICD-10 transition.
The AHIMA survey's authors said that time, money and human resources investments in four areas must be balanced and integrated to increase a facility's odds of a successful deployment: computer-assisted coding, clinical documentation improvement, education and audits.
Still, the analysis authors said, "There is no silver bullet for ICD-10 transition success."
WEDI, last month, launched an initiative to bring together state collaborative organizations to help reduce the time and cost for ICD-10 implementation, as well as to bring greater efficiencies to the process. Initial partners in the effort are the California ICD-10 Collaborative, the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, the Minnesota ICD-10 Collaborative, the NCHICA and the Wisconsin ICD-10 Collaborative.
To learn more:
- read the Journal of AHIMA analysis