Health Information Management

Hospital group advises CMS to issue ICD-10 rules before final claims attachment rule

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, December 5, 2005

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The claims attachment proposed rule would introduce elements that are not a part of the current billing process and cause confusion among hospitals, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA). The group recently issued comments on the proposed rule and urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to issue rules for ICD-10 adoption before issuing the final claims attachment rule.

Rick Pollack, executive vice president of the AMA, wrote in a letter to CMS that "the attachment standards will yield a zero net return on investment for hospitals. Moreover, the attachment standard will be far costlier to implement than the previous HIPAA claims standards." Because of the costs, Pollack advised CMS to allow three years for hospitals to comply after the final rule is issued.

Also, Pollack recommended that CMS issue the ICD-10 rules because "ICD-10 provides greater clinical specificity and has the ability to reduce or eliminate the reliance on claim attachments" and would affect more claims than the claims attachment rule.

Click here to read Pollack's letter to CMS.



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