ICD-10 Delay Should Help Financial Institutions Sell Medical Lockbox Services

Have you heard the news? Again! ICD-10 is pushed back another year for implementation.

Behind the controversy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a tsunami brewing within the healthcare industry. Many were concerned about the overhead and conversion costs, so pressure was building as the deadline was lurking in October 2014. It might have been another “Y2K”, in that proper planning and execution would have mitigated the risks and made the transition more like a little storm rather than a tsunami… but we will never know for 2014.

No doubt it is “about time” for the US to catch up with other countries with ICD-10. However, when you think about the complexity in the market today due to ACA, healthcare providers have their plates full due to a number of issues.

This is actually good news for financial institutions who are targeting healthcare providers for their medical lockboxes. Banks who utilize high performance EOB conversion and EFT Reassociation to ERAs technologies should be able to grab market share now. Providers don’t have the excuse that ICD-10 is coming, so a conversion to enhanced medical lockbox functionality should be much easier to implement as the changes in codes in EOBs and EDI 835 files to ICD-10 won’t have an impact short term.