The World Health Organization has postponed rollout of ICD-11 by two years, from 2015 to 2017, dx revision watch and Government Health IT both have reported.
While WHO has not updated its timeline page or officially announced the change, a fact sheet from the organization reveals that "the 11th revision process is underway and the final ICD-11 will be released in 2017." What's more, a notice on WHO's classifications page says that ICD's 11th revision is due by 2017.
The decision has been under consideration for several months, according to the dx revision watch post. Development of ICD-11 began in April 2007, and initially was scheduled to be implemented by 2012.
ICD10Watch Editor Carl Natale says he welcomes the news in a post published to Government Health IT.
"Anyone who now argues we need to leapfrog from ICD-9 coding to ICD-11 coding is just making up arguments," he says. "They don't want a better solution, they want nothing new."
The U.S., of course, has yet to make the switch to ICD-10 coding; that deadline is set for Oct. 1 of this year.
Despite already being delayed once, many in the healthcare industry--in particular physician practices--don't appear ready for the transition to ICD-10.
A survey published in December by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange determined that the healthcare industry is "far behind" milestones suggested by an ICD-10 timeline developed by WEDI and the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance in September 2012.
During a webinar hosted by FierceHealthIT in December entitled "What to do NOW to prepare for ICD-10," provider representatives Colleen Deighan and Stephen Stewart discussed steps each of their organizations have taken to prepare for the shift.
"The interesting thing is, the dynamics and the scope of what we're dealing with here is the same whether you're small or very, very large," Stewart, CIO at Henry County Health Center, a 74-bed hospital in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, said. "I can recall very vividly sitting in a [College of Healthcare Information Management Executives] conference in 2010 and hearing the first presentation on ICD-10 and a cold fear fell over me as I thought about the fact that 'there's a lot to do here and we haven't done anything yet.'"
To learn more:
- here's the dx revision watch post
- read the post to Government Health IT
- check out the ICD information sheet
- here's the WHO's classifications page