Is it too early to worry about ICD-10?

A recent survey on ICD-10 indicates that one-third of the 500 physician practices interviewed have not started compliance work yet. October 2014 is the implementation deadline, but how much time is really needed?

Key highlights of the survey include:

• Thirty-six percent of respondents who have not started ICD-10 preparations believe there is plenty of time to prepare, 26 percent don’t have the time, staff or training resources to start; and 22 percent don’t know where to start planning.
• Respondents see training and lack of payer readiness as the largest challenge.
• More than half are concerned about cash flow disruptions when ICD-10 becomes effective.
• Forty-three percent of responding practices expect a productivity drop of less than 20 percent, while a third expect a drop of up to 40 percent.
• The biggest worries are cash flow, payer readiness, insufficient staff training, productivity drops and the technology won’t be ready.
• Only 12 percent believe they are on track for a timely implementation while one-fifth believe they are already behind.

Does it remind you of Y2K? Sounding the alarm early can be a great thing for awareness and preparedness planning. However, it would appear that most organizations will only focus on ICD-10 in 2014.

Providers should take the rest of 2013 to eliminate unproductive, low value functions which may explode when ICD-10 hits. For example, manual processing of paper, i.e. EOB’s and denial management can now be nearly eliminated with solutions which can be implemented in a mere 30 days. This will enable providers to reallocate resources to a big project, like ICD-10 in 2014.

Complete survey results from claims clearinghouse Navicure who commissioned Porter Research to conduct the online survey, are available at navicure.com/survey.

Source: Health Data Management