April 14, 2014

On April 1, a bill was signed by President Obama which delays ICD-10 implementation until October 1, 2015. The switch from the current ICD-9 to ICD-10 was to occur on Oct. 1 of this year. The ICD-10 delay was part of a larger bill dealing with Medicare reimbursements for physicians.

TriHealth has made great progress toward implementing ICD-10 and will continue with current preparation for ICD-10 despite this implementation date change. However, this does not mean that we will be officially submitting claims in ICD-10 according to the original implementation date.  

"We look at this extended preparation date as an opportunity and not a problem," said Dr. Georges Feghali, Senior Vice President of Quality and Chief Medical Officer. "ICD-10 is about improving the quality of the health information we're documenting, so this added time will allow us to fine tune our processes and procedures to provide even higher quality care for our patients."

There are several reasons to continue the planning:

1. Changes being made now are resulting in improvements across the system, from documentation to process improvements.
2. This will allow more time to optimize EPIC for documentation specificity and overall efficiency for the physicians.
3. Being prepared early allows us to participate in organization-wide and external testing, including end-to-end testing with payers (such as insurance companies). This will help decrease one of the largest risks with ICD-10, and that is payer readiness.
4. Allows more time for additional process improvements.

ICD-10, or the tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, was to replace the current ICD-9 on Oct. 1, 2014. The federal government has mandated this change. ICD codes are alphanumeric designations given to every diagnosis, description of symptoms and cause of death attributed to human beings.

"Thanks to our team members and physicians who have worked so hard and will continue to work hard as we gear up for the transition," said Craig Rucker, Sr. Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "There is still a lot of work ahead and I'm confident our staff and physicians are up to the challenge."

TriHealth is prepared to make adjustments to its current plan as more information becomes available from the government. These adjustments will be communicated via LinkNotes for team members and via Physician Briefings for physicians.

Additional information and ICD-10 resources are available on LinkNet for team members and on Physician Access for physicians.