ICD Series "Did You Know?" 2 of 5 by Suzanne MacEwan

Did you know that ICD-10 will impact every area of your practice? Start now with performing an impact assessment. This is very easy, just take a pen and paper and walk through your practice and make note every time a diagnosis code is used during a patient visit, start with check-in and follow the patient cycle all the way through check out. ICD-10 is much more than a coding and IT issue. For more information on how to perform an impact assessment contact Suzanne MacEwan at smacewan@emr-hit.com or, visit our Web Site / ICD 10 Page.

ICD Series "Did You Know?" 1 of 5 by Suzanne MacEwan

Did you know that the United States is the last industrialized nation to implement ICD-10? The good news with that is we can learn from other countries and their advice to us is don’t wait, start preparing NOW! One of the things you can start doing now is chart audits to see if your current documentation will meet the ICD-10 elements. For more information on how to perform these chart audits contact Suzanne MacEwan at smacewan@emr-hit.com or, visit our Web Site / ICD 10 Page.

ICD 10 Recording

A special thanks to our 59 Attendees today. Your questions were awesome and made the webinar extremely comprehensive! To our followers, here is the webinar link: ICD 10 Video 

ICD 10, Avoid Denials, Part 1

Webinar August 6 12 PM EDT, 

Register Now, Click Here, 

Did You Know Part 1, 

Chart Audits

ICD 10 Overview (by Suzanne MacEwan)
• What you need to know to be ICD 10 Compliant: 
• Cash Reserves 
• Downtime 
• Early Preparation 
• Chart Audits 

...your revenue could stop abruptly!

The time to start planning is now. Here is a scary fact: industry experts are recommending physician practices have at least 6 months cash reserves to get through the ICD 10 transition, with some saying that if a practice is on the financial bubble, the ICD 10 transition can put them out of business. Another scary fact is 40% of providers are not currently documenting to support specific ICD 10 codes which means claims' denials will increase.

October 1, 2014 may be 13 months away, but the sooner you plan, the better chance your practice will have to survive. The best place to start is by educating yourself. Understand what ICD 10 is all about and communicate that to your providers and staff. Start performing chart audits to see if your current chart documentation will be sufficient for ICD 10. Perform an impact assessment to see where in your practice a diagnosis code touches, and understand that each of these areas needs to be trained in ICD 10 and office processes and workflows need to be adjusted.

Start preparing a budget for any software or hardware upgrades and allocating time for staff training and reduced productivity during the transition phase. Based on other countries who have implemented ICD 10,data shows practices experienced a downtime and loss of productivity of 20% for the first 6 months on ICD 10. The United States is the last industrialized nation to implement ICD 10; we need to learn from the experiences of other countries and prepare early as this is the key to success.

Should you and/or your practice administrator like more information, please join me and the HIT team for the webinar highlighted above. Should you miss this or cannot attend, contact me directly for more information.