August 2014

This week, CMS issued a rule setting the ICD-10 transition date for October 1, 2015. Announcement of the coming transition date is intended to give providers, insurance companies, and others in the healthcare industry time to ramp up their operations to ensure their systems and business processes are ready to go on Oct. 1, 2015.

ICD-10 codes are used on health claims to describe diagnoses and procedures submitted to public and private health insurers. According to CMS, the use of ICD-10 will enable " more detailed patient history coding…ICD-10 can help to better coordinate a patient's care across providers and over time. ICD-10 improves quality measurement and reporting, facilitates the detection and prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse, and leads to greater accuracy of reimbursement for medical services. The code set's granularity will improve data capture and analytics of public health surveillance and reporting, national quality reporting, research and data analysis, and provide detailed data to enhance health care delivery. Health care providers and specialty groups in the United States provided extensive input into the development of ICD-10, which includes more detailed codes for the conditions they treat and reflects advances in medicine and medical technology…Additionally, ICD-10 captures the severity and stage of diseases such as chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and asthma."

CMS had earlier set a transition date in 2014, but that deadline was moved back 1year by Congress. No further delays are expected in the ICD-10 transition date.