Settled into ICD-10 yet?
The infamous transition to the new coding system last October was met with a significant amount of controversy, but now almost six months out, it appears it wasn't as rocky as many believed, despite the 155,000 total ICD-10 codes.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2016, specialty practices will now need to prepare for the first update to ICD-10. At a recent meeting of the ICD-10 Coordination & Maintenance Committee, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services unveiled plans for implementing its first update to the new coding system on Oct. 1, 2016.
This marked the first meeting of the committee since the initial ICD-10 implementation last October.
Included in the first ICD-10 update will be an additional 1,900 diagnostic codes and more than 3,650 new procedure codes.
According to Pat Brooks, Co-Chair of the ICD-10 Coordination & Maintenance Committee, there were no calls for earlier updates to ICD-10.
"If we had planned to have an April 1 code update, then we would have had to have a request at the September Coordination & Maintenance Committee meeting for an expedited code update," she explained. "If we had, we would have made that decision by now. There were no requests for an April 1 code update at the September meeting; therefore, there won't be any updates until October 1, 2016."
A list of the new procedural codes and the new diagnosis codes will be released next month on CMS' website.