ICD-10 affects everyone in the health care environment, from doctors and nurses to billers and clinical support staff. Everyone within a health system will be involved in the transition as 68,000 new codes will be introduced that will disrupt current workflows.
At Vibrant Health, the biggest difference between ICD-9 and ICD-10 will be the increase in specificity and localization to more accurately report a condition. “We can no longer code for generic asthma,” says Jenny Truax, Coding/Billing Educator. “With the ICD-10 code, we will know if it’s mild, moderate or severe asthma.” By moving to alphanumeric codes, clinicians will now have a better picture of a patient’s history.
Jenny said her department will have to relearn codes that are second nature. ICD-10 codes won’t affect the charges or current procedure terminology codes for routine office visits, but they will help support necessary resources for patients. The claims to insurance providers will provide a clearer picture of how well or sick a patient is, which will help health systems to get a more robust sense of how well or sick their communities are.
On the other hand, billers are still waiting for Oct. 1, when claims start going through insurance providers. Jeanne Refsnider, Business Office Manager at Vibrant Health, thinks insurance companies will deny more claims than usual in the beginning because they won’t be specific enough. “We don’t know what will happen, but we hope everyone is ready to accept claims. We’ve been training for over two years, so I feel that we are ready,” says Jeanne.
From a physician’s standpoint, Dr. Chris Tashjian sees the transition as a non-event, similar to Y2K. While workflows will be moderately affected as favorited codes will have to be relearned, he sees Cerner’s Diagnosis Assistant as a helpful tool to ensure accurate coding and to reduce any additional time necessary around the new coding workflow. As for patients, he says the transition won’t have any effect in the exam room.
“Physicians struggle with change that doesn’t directly affect or improve care, so it’s natural to see some pushback. However, we will get a much better knowledge base on the severity of illness of a patient. The deeper the insights we get from a code, the more accurate information we’ll have to correctly diagnosis a patient,” says Dr. Tashjian.
Vibrant Health is eagerly waiting for Oct. 1, but the staff feels confident the changeover will have little to no impact on the quality of patient care. If anything, the staff views the transition as a positive for patients, because providers will gain a better understanding of a patient’s history and will allow for proper diagnosis and treatment.
