Physician Practice

Providers report overwhelming ICD-10 acknowledgement testing success

Physician Practice Insider, February 10, 2015

Eighty-four percent of providers experienced no major problems with early ICD-10 acknowledgement testing, according to a recent AAPC survey of more than 2,000 providers.

In fact, 72% of providers experienced no denials and another 16% reporting that 10% or less of their claims were denied, according to the survey. These results are similar to the numbers CMS reported after its November 2014 acknowledgement testing week. CMS accepted 76% of claims during the week, with the daily acceptance rate climbing to 87% on the final day.

CMS also noted that the majority of denials were due to invalid National Provider Identifiers, not problems with ICD-10 codes. CMS rejected all claims with future dates of service during the testing week as well.

The AAPC survey provided insight into ICD-10 implementation costs, with 72% of providers responding they have spent less than $5,000 per provider so far. Another 26% responded that implementation costs are between $5,001 and $10,000 per provider so far.

Payers only offered testing to 23% of respondents, with the majority accepting the offer, according to the survey. AAPC encourages providers to reach out to payers to ask about participating in CMS' upcoming ICD-10 acknowledgment and end-to-end testing weeks. Acknowledgment testing weeks will be held March 2–6 and June 1–5, with end-to-end testing weeks scheduled for April 27–May 1 and July 20–24.

This article originally appeared in JustCoding.com.
 

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