ICD-10 Myths

Myths about ICD-10

So, the ICD-10 deadline whisked past us last week, and even still there are many practices that have not been able to understand the ICD-10 concept fully. Many physicians have been hearing things about ICD-10, most of which are not actually true. As a result, the ICD-10 implementation has been perceived much more complex than it actually is.

Following are some of the myths that have been busted by experts.

1. ICD-9 is outdated and needs replacement.

Though the ICD-9 has become outdated, it does not essentially mean that it needs replacement. The structure of ICD-9 consisted of 5 numeric placeholders, which means, there could be over 100,000 possible codes. The expansion of ICD-9 could have been done by increasing the number

There are around 40,000 injury and poisoning codes in ICD-10 compared to a meager 2,600 in ICD-9. Even external cause of injury increased from 1,300 in ICD-9 to 6,800 in ICD-10.

3. ICD-10 will improve patient care.

Let us clear this up a bit. ICD-10 helps gather and sort vast amounts of patient data. No way does it increase the quality of care provided. That will be done by advances in medical science. The ICD-10 codes will be entered once there is a diagnosis and the treatment will be the same. ICD-10 is not going to change how our healthcare system functions, it is just going to simplify data handling and facilitate better payments, which will be a win-win situation for everyone involved.

4. Payers will not be ready for the ICD-10 transition.

On June 2, CMS announced the second end-to-end testing week. There were over 800 companies participating which collectively sent over 23,000 test claims, while testing the new code set. Over 88% of the submitted codes were accepted in this test. A similar test was also held in January with an acceptance rate of 81%. Given such high acceptance rates from payers during the test phase, it is apparent that the payers are all geared up for

ICD-10 was developed without physician input.

This one does actually sound like a myth. If you were to design a coding system for the healthcare industry, whose primary objective is to classify and report diseases in a healthcare setting, doing this without physician input would be tiring as it would be