Most top tier EMR/EHR software systems will include an ICD-10 General Equivalency Mapping (GEM) tool to assist you and your administrative personnel with side-by-side medical coding. The software’s GEM functionality translates diagnostic and procedural codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 and offers other critical information that connects codes in ICD-9 to codes in ICD-10, such as:

It's now 2015, and all Medicare providers will soon be required to at least begin demonstrating compliance with meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Failing to meet this requirement will start to come with a penalty cost, as of the New Year, triggering a +1% reduction in Medicare reimbursement every year through at least 2017 and possibly later. In 2015, CMS requires Stage Two Meaningful Use compliance by providers who have already fulfilled the Stage One requirements during the previous 2-3 years. The core requirements for Stage Two compliance are dependent upon successful installation and mastery of sophisticated information systems that can support EHR exchange between providers and patients as well as between providers and other providers. Some of these are:

The switch to ICD-10 means dramatic changes to the U.S. healthcare infrastructure in terms of one-on-one patient care, clinical documentation, and insurance claims processing. It’s not enough to fully implement ICD-10 in a private practice with doctors and their personnel. Physicians also need to ensure that all of their business partners (i.e. EHR software vendors, payers, and clearinghouses) are up to speed and will be ready for ICD-10 by October 1, 2015. The following is a closer look at two of the challenges that healthcare providers and payers specifically face in the midst of an ICD-10 transition, along with how to overcome them.

Implementation of ICD-10 will lead to significant changes in our national healthcare system in terms of patient care, clinical documentation, coding and billing, medical health records, and research. If you believe that ICD-10 won’t take much time and energy to implement in your specialty-specific practice, you will probably want to file it away for your to-do list in September 2015. Doing this, however, would be absolutely catastrophic for your overall revenue stream after the ICD-10 deadline, which is October 1, 2015. Why? If insurance claims for medical services on or after October 1, 2015 don’t have the correct ICD-10 codes, you will face heavy delays and flat-out denials.

In our previous blog, we covered the first three aspects of getting ready for ICD-10: Create a budget with all ICD-10-related expenditures Use ICD-9 codes as precisely as possible Become well-versed with ICD-10 through proper training prior to the ICD-10 deadline There are three additional aspects that are incredibly vital to a successful ICD-10 transition. All together, these six steps can assist you in laying the groundwork for your ICD-10 adoption and implementation.

October 1, 2015. Why is this date extremely vital for your specialty-specific medical practice? One word: ICD-10-CM. ICD-10-CM has to be fully implemented in your practice by this date – or else all of your insurance claims for clinical treatment after this deadline will be denied. Therefore, some major preparations are necessary to continue receiving insurance reimbursements for your medical services. To assist you in your ICD-10 journey, we would like to give you 6 tips on how to execute a smooth and successful transition with the least number of road bumps along the way. Naturally, the earlier you and your personnel begin to actively get ready, the easier it will be to monitor your revenue cycle after October 1, 2015. Therefore, don’t procrastinate on ICD-10 until the last minute.

The disruptive nature of the transition to ICD-10 poses serious questions for specialty practices; and while we’ve worked to address many questions in this blog, including how ICD-10 works, key differences between it and ICD-9, steps for preparing your clinical functions and readying your overall practice, and how an EMR can minimize ICD-10 disruption, there still is one lingering question: Do we really need it?

Have you implemented certified EMR/EHR technology in your specialty practice? The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) required reimbursement penalties for all Medicare eligible healthcare providers who do not comply with Meaningful Use.