Last year in Chicago, the annual meeting of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) was by and large focused on coding. And considering how serious an impression coding made at the time, it is more than likely to have a greater impact during AHIMA 2013 with the transition to ICD-10 now less than a year away.
Over the past several months, details about the healthcare industry’s preparedness have emerged and highlighted a number of areas where healthcare organizations and providers are making advances as well as areas where they are falling short.
According to an ICD-10 readiness survey conducted by Health Revenue Assurance Holdings (HRAA), hospitals collectively have reached a tipping point when it comes to training staff. As of April, 60 percent had begun ICD-10 CM portion of their training for coding staff. On the procedural side, 64 have kicked off their ICD-10-PCS training, a double-digit gain since the last survey was conducted.
“The turnaround was due to the fact that after the extension was put into place now budgets have been opened up to choose the vendor of choice to begin that education and training,” HRAA CEO and Chairman Andrea Clark told EHRIntelligence.com last month. “Also, there is a mindset that you don’t want to train too far out or you don’t want to train too close, so it’s right at a sweet spot that they can do the fundamental CM and PCS training and allow the coders to apply and assign the ICD-10 in order to start reviewing data pre-Oct. 1, 2014.”
Despite this progress, there’s still plenty cause for concern. On the one hand, accuracy is proving to be a problem as a recent ICD-10 pilot has shown. What the pilot revealed generally was a 63-percent rate of accuracy rate with some coding test claims registering abysmally low scores of 30-percent accuracy. On the other hands, there is still a lack of communication between providers and payers that could lead to frustration after Oct. 1, 2014.
“We truly believe it’s going to be a problematic area if hospitals do not engage and understand how they are going to map and pay them under the DRG model,” Clark described. “If they do not engage in that conversation and October 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th of 2014 comes along, they can be surprised at the amount of denials they may receive along with suspension of claims and not have a strategy in place to correct those problems.”
With the ICD-10 landscape looking uneven and presented plenty of opportunity for improvement, what insight will AHIMA 2013 provide about a solution to this challenge? Although the exhibition floor might lead a person to believe that the answer to that question is some technology or another, the truth of the matter is that that answer is people, particularly how well they communicate with their partners and share best practices with their peers.
Stay up-to-date with AHIMA 2013 through the EHRIntelligence.com coverage of this year’s event in Atlanta.
