Yay or Nay on the ICD-10 Delay?

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Last week, the House of Representatives voted on a bill that included a proposal for delaying the implementation of ICD-10 for another year, postponing the compliance date to October 2015. Hospitals nationwide are in the throes of gearing up for the implementation deadline in October of this year, a mere six months away. While some who are not in healthcare may view the delay as a sign of relief, those who have been spending time and money on the implementations are not sighing so much as groaning at the possibility of pushing the deadline out further.

ICD-10, with nearly 65,000+ codes, is a medical megalith that has been on the backs of hospital administrators for the last few years. Further pushing back this deadline means several things to the administrators attempting to prepare their organizations to take part: more time, more money and less faith.

ICD-10 Delay: Time Consequences

Healthcare organizations began their ICD-10 preparations years ago, and the constant threat of compliance has been hanging over their heads for at least the last twelve months. To have put all this time and effort into redesigning organizations to accommodate the changes, restructuring departments and job descriptions and allotting time away from regular duties for staff training, the prospect of all these measures becoming obsolete by 2015 is horrifying to those who oversee the budget.

ICD-10: Money Consequences

Hospitals nationwide have already invested billions of dollars in technology, staff and services to assist with their implementation. For many hospitals, particularly rural non-profits, the well has simply run dry. There is no more money to tap for keeping up with what change could occur in another year, what new technology could emerge, and the hiring and retention of trained coders to tackle the challenges presented by the new ICD-10 vocabulary.

ICD-10: Loss of Faith

Pushing out the deadline another year could have a similar effect as the constant delay of EMR implementation in some hospitals: staff see administration as “cry wolfers” who constantly make “threats” about these huge implementations and projects; and yet nothing changes. Years go by with no change and while the administration scrambles to constantly restructure, the staff only sees the ways in which the institution is stagnating. They’re frustrated, overworked, underpaid and there’s seemingly no end in sight.

Many national healthcare presences have taken to social media and news outlets to start a conversation about what the delay would mean. The general sentiment is that everyone’s tired, and we just want to “get it over with.”

Whether or not Congress and President Obama are listening, and taking the worries of those who work in the trenches of healthcare, remains to be seen. The final vote has been pushed into next week.

Will your implementation project need restructuring if ICD-10 is delayed?

BHM Healthcare Solutions offers services that can help. Call us today for a complimentary consultation and find out more about how we can help.

Call 1-888-831-1171 or email us at results@bhmpc.com

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