December 30, 2011
Top Five ICD-10 Pitfalls – “Top 10″ Health IT List Series
Written by: John
Today is going to be the last day looking at other people’s “Top Health IT Lists” since tomorrow I think I’ll create my own Top 10 Health IT 2011 List and then for the New Years I’ll see about doing a Top 10 Health IT in 2012 list. However, today let’s look at something that will likely make the Top 10 2012 Health IT issues: ICD-10. Government Health IT recently wrote an article what they call the Top 5 ICD-10 Pitfalls.
1. Reporting: I’m sure that many think that ICD-10 is just going to happen and be fine. They’ll assume that their reports are just going to work with ICD-10 since they worked with ICD-9. Don’t be so sure. Test the reports so you know one way or another. Diving a little deeper beforehand is a lot better than learning about the problems after.
2. Overlooking impacted areas: Much like an EHR implementation, don’t forget the other people that are affected by ICD-10. Involve everyone in the process so that they can share their concerns so they can be addressed. Plus, by having them involved you’ll get much better buy in from the staff.
3. Teaching old dogs new tricks: ICD-10 is a different beast and will require significant training even if you have an expert ICD-9 coder with years of experience. Don’t underestimate the cost to train your coders on ICD-10.
4. Preparing for impact on productivity: The article mentions Canada’s loss of productivity during their implementation of ICD-10. Do we think we’re going to be any different? Remember also that productivity loss can come in a lot of different places (which is kind of a repeat of number 2 above).
5. Communicating with IT vendors: It’s one thing to trust that your EHR and other health IT vendors are prepared to deal with ICD-10. It’s another to blindly follow whatever you’re being told. Remember at the end of the day it’s your organization that will suffer if your health IT vendor is not ready. I like to use the phrase, trust but verify.
Be sure to read the rest of my Health IT Top 10 as they’re posted.
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2 responses to "Top Five ICD-10 Pitfalls – “Top 10″ Health IT List Series"
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The 5 pitfalls of ICD-10 conversion deal with reporting, productivity loss, inadequate training, overlooking some areas impacted and communication with health care operations. The government lists these as the top 5 pitfalls. Most large health providers will have all these pitfalls handled. The government has a very big stake because of the large impact of Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid will likely have all of these problems because of the special coding requirements medicare places on providers. They add special coding requirements from ICD-9 that other insurance does not require.
The US is the last country using ICD-9. We MUST move to ICD-10. Help give us an equal comparison to really see how our health care compares to the rest of the world. With the US using ICD-9 and the rest of the world using ICD-10, these comparisons are impossible
Rich Hartmann,
Which comparisons do you think we’ll do or be able to do once we are on ICD-10 like the rest of the world? Also, if the goal is for us to compare ourselves to the rest of the world, why did we then decide to make our own version of ICD-10? I imagine there’s a reason that move was made and I’d love to know why.