According to a November 15th release, the American Medical Association (AMA), the nation’s largest physician organization, voted today to stop the implementation of ICD-10.
According to the AMA President, “The implementation of ICD-10 will create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patients’ care. At a time when we are working to get the best value possible for our health care dollar, this massive and expensive undertaking will add administrative expense and create unnecessary workflow disruptions. The timing could not be worse as many physicians are working to implement electronic health records into their practices. We will continue working to help physicians keep their focus where it should be – on their patients.”
A 2008 study found that a small three-physician practice would need to spend $83,290 to implement ICD-10, and a 10-physician practice would spend $285,195 to make the coding change.
What are your thoughts and reactions to this news?
Many believe – and this includes JATA’s own Angela Carmichael who gave a very good webinar on ICD-10 the other day – that regardless of what the AMA hopes for, the transition to ICD-10 is a done deal. It remains to be seen whether hospitals, physician leaders and educators, health insurers, malpractice insurers, CMS, and regulatory agencies are able and willing to create the collaborations with physicians and all other “boots on the clinic floor” so that they will WANT to learn ICD-10 and employ it. To say simply, “You had better learn this, so come to this seminar/webinar/weekend CME program/etc.,” is insufficient. It won’t work because it does nothing to engage any party in the needs of all parties. Can you create alignment among parties so that learning and using ICD-10 is a natural, genuine aspect of a relationship? And indeed this is exactly the same relationship that weds all parties to value, to compliance, to managing common risk – including the risk to the patient.
This is the time to bring people together at the table. This is not the time to divide the pie. This is the time to bake a new one. The successful ones will be those who have the courage to create and test new recipes.
I’m in total agreement. CMS dropped the ball back in late 2008, prior to the Final Rule mandating ICD-10-CM/PCS in 2013, by failing to publish empirical data from other early adopters of ICD-10 that indeed the transition would improve quality of care, patient safety and lead to improved outcomes. While we know that gaining early by-in from physicians is critical, we are now less than 650 days out from the go-live date with only anecdotal support for ICD-10. It didn’t take a crystal ball to know that there would be tremendous physician push-back as the go-live date loomed ever closer. Regardless of the AMA’s position and clout, I would not hold my breath in anticipation of a delay, or reprieve, in the transition to ICD-10. In the end, hospital providers must work that much harder to engage physicians and gain their support for the transition, all along hoping that ICD-10’s touted benefits will sway physicians to support the mandate.
Angela Carmichael
Angela Carmichael, MBA, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P AHIMA Approved ICD-10-CM/PCS Trainer