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Ophthalmologists are trained to provide the full spectrum of eyecare, from prescribing glasses to precision eye surgery. Yet while they may be experts at treating patients, very few have business degrees or specialized practice management skills. Poor real estate decisions and bad hires, for example, are common mistakes that constitute part of the typical learning curve. However, many doctors make serious financial mistakes that can devastate their businesses, such as choosing the wrong electronic health record (EHR) and then sticking with it because of sunk costs.

Now that the ICD-10 coding system has been up and running for just over a month, we are starting to see some reports back from the trenches. And those reports are surprisingly good. The sky did not fall in and the world did not come to an end. For most practices, denials did not go through the roof. Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor for the Medical Group Management Association, was at a Town Hall meeting a couple of weeks ago with Humana and Emdeon (a medical claims clearinghouse) and both organizations reported that they were seeing no great increase in denials and no big drop in the number of claims submitted.