ICD-10

CMS READIES FOR ICD-10 IMPLEMENTATION

With the increasing success of processing ICD-10 claims, CMS is readying for the October 1, 2015 implementation date of ICD-10. As a reminder, all Medicare claims with a date of service on or after October 1, 2015 will be rejected if they do not contain a valid ICD-10 code. CMS’ claims processing systems will not be able to accept ICD-9 codes for dates of service after September 30, 2015 or accept claims that contain both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes.

With the October 1, 2015 deadline only 4 months away, practices still have time to prepare for ICD-10. CMS has a number of tools and resources such as the “Road to 10” website that provides essential information for small physician practices. The Road to 10 website is: www.roadto10.org.

Before October 1, many physicians' practices will spend countless time, money and other resources preparing for the transition to ICD-10.  We at The Physicians Foundation recognize what a near Herculean task it will be for physicians and their medical practices to deal with an increase from about 14,000 diagnostic codes under the present ICD-9 to roughly 68,000 codes under ICD-10!  When asked in our recent Foundation survey, 50 percent of physician respondents said it would create a severe administrative problem, while 75 percent agreed that it will unnecessarily complicate the coding process.

RESOURCE CENTER FOR ICD-10 CODING