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ICD-10 launches without a hitch

Physician Practice Insider, February 9, 2016

Health policy experts attribute the smooth transition in part to widespread anxiety leading up to the ICD-10 launch, something that led federal officials to delay it one year from October 2014 to October 2015. That extra time may have made the difference, giving providers an additional year for training and software manufacturers more time to update their HIT systems.

Barbie Hays, coding and compliance strategist for the American Academy of Family Physicians in Leawood, Kansas, says the initial success of ICD-10 may also be a function of EHR vendors having more time to update software packages with General Equivalence Mapping (GEM) software, which helps to link ICD-9 codes with their ICD-10 counterparts. “GEMs provides a great stepping stone for practices as they learn the system,” says Hays.

In that same vein, providers are also reporting that some EHR systems are handling the transition better than others. “We’re hearing that some EHR systems are doing great and that others are not so great, sort of the same things we hear about with meaningful use,” says Hays.

This article was originally published in Physician Practice Perspectives. Subscribers can read the full article in the February 2016 issue.

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