While at AHIMA, I asked Dr. Jon Elion, Founder and CEO of ChartWise Medical Systems, the million dollar question, “Are Physicians Ready for ICD-10?” I love his comparison of the fear mongering we saw with Y2K with the move to ICD-10. Here’s his video answer:
What do you think? Are most physicians ready for ICD-10?
John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.
What he says is largely true for the inpatient world and for many specialists, particularly procedurally oriented specialists. These folks do a note and someone else picks the code.
All the primary care providers I know have to select the billing code themselves. Having to pick from hugely expanded group of codes is going to take more time. There is only one place the time can be stolen from: actual patient care.
The billing and coding data will be more robust, but the interaction with the patient will get skinnier.
I agree, Peter. It is absolutely the patients who will suffer. Answering the question posed by the blog, no I don’t think most practices are ready for the ICD-10 implementation.