Expert Panel Discussion: Health Care Reform:
How Community Hospitals Thrive in an Environment of Rapid Change
James Ulrich
I would say that we are at the educational stage of preparing for ICD-10. Our coders and billings are going through education. We are also beginning to work with 3M, who provides our coding software, as well as with McKesson as far as dealing with this change from a health information systems standpoint.
Bridgett Reed
We are in the infancy stage of preparing for ICD-10. Given the size of our institution, we have limited coders and no staff capacity to take on the preparation for ICD-10. We will create a full project plan with dedicated resources to ensure we have visibility and can track progress to ensure the entire facility and providers are well prepared for implementation.
Jamie Webster
Preparing for ICD-10 is a large and complex project. Obviously, health care professionals must upgrade health information management systems and train HIM professionals. However, our organization is discovering what lies beyond that basic preparation as we begin to analyze gaps and identify systems that depend on ICD codes.
We are starting with our revenue cycle. This will reveal some of the many systems and activities ICD-10 will affect. We will need to identify and update any paper or electronic process or system that currently uses ICD-9 for ICD-10. Besides coding software updates, our hospital must identify and update patient accounting, registration, ancillary reporting and many other systems to be ready for ICD-10
