ICD10 Kickoff meeting

Although BIDMC has finished its 5010 work in anticipation of the January 1, 2012 deadline, we're just beginning our ICD10 project for an October 1, 2013 go live.

As I've written about previously, I believe that ICD10 implementation should be delayed until after Meaningful Use Stage 3 (2016) to enable widespread adoption of structured clinical documentation including vocabularies like SNOMED-CT which will provide the necessary detail for coders using ICD10.   Moving forward with ICD10 in the absence of enhanced electronic clinical documentation makes no sense.

That being said, we need to follow the October 2013 timeline, as that is the current requirement.

Our ICD10 Steering Committee includes a multi-stakeholder group from inpatient, ambulatory, finance, HIM, our physician's organization,  and IS.   ICD10 is not an IS project, but is an enterprise project involving all operational areas.

To ensure a common understanding about the scope of work ahead, I've prepared this presentation.

I've also circulated a sample project plan from the American Medical Association.

At our first meeting, we'll need to select a project manager and allocate the resources for the detailed work ahead including

*completing an inventory systems where ICD info is housed.
*checking with each of the software vendors so impacted to see if the current version of their software can support the extended characters and transitional issues
*determining the state of our software installs and plans for upgrades to compliant versions
*checking payer contracts for use of ICD10 codes
*creating test plans for pre-production cutover
*conducting training sessions for our coding staff on ICD10
*contacting payers on their timeframe for being compliant and arranging pre-production test plans
*checking web reporting systems such as State, Federal, or others on use of ICD10 codes

If ICD10 was delayed until 2016, our approach would be different.    We'd focus on getting widespread provider adoption of SNOMED-CT on the front end, then limit ICD10 implementation to back office functions, mapping clinically focused SNOMED-CT codes to administrative ICD10 codes for billing.  Let's hope wise folks at CMS realize the benefits of such an approach.

Until then, our project will march ahead.