ICD-10 On The Front Lines

Now that ICD-10 is underway, results and feedback is showing more people were prepared than they thought. Congratulations! Some of the initial fears have been put aside and our confidence has been restored.

 I thought I would share a few tweets:

"Well, #ICD10, you scared me more than Y2K in 1999 but both were much ado about nothing.  Thanks, @eClinicalWorks.  Together, we got this."

"Did #ICD10 really just happen!? @HHSGov @CMSGov"

Here's a notice that Dallas pediatric practice Whole Practice Wellness posted on its Facebook page for patients:

"Today starts the first day of the new ICD 10 medical coding system. The entire nation is making this change. Please be patient with your doctors, therapists, their staff and ins claims. Ins claims WILL be slow. If your claims were approved prior to today and all the sudden start getting denied let your doctors know. This change is for the ins companies to deny paying out, it's that simple. Again this is not your doctors fault. This sucks for us too smile emoticon have an amazing day."

"First batches of mixed #ICD10 and #ICD9 claims went out of our clearinghouse reaching various payers. No problems so far!!!! :)"

"So much for the CMS grace period. CMS promised a year of accepting ICD-10 claims as long as the code is in the "right family" but other insurers have not followed suit."

"My clearinghouse kicked out all unspecified codes and will not submit them to any insurance carrier. The CMS promise is void in this situation because my clearinghouse will not even allow them to go through without all being recoded."

One thing everyone seems to have in common is getting through to Insurance companies, and some of the eligibility web sites have been reported to be down. While some of these problems will surely be corrected in the coming weeks, we still play the waiting game of our claims being adjudicated, which could be weeks from now.

According to the CMS/War Room on ICD-10, there were minimal rejections; some of the rejections were from using ICD-9 and ICD-10 on the same claim form. Referrals not being transferred to ICD-10 and less than 1% were erroneously flagged as ICD-9. So far it looks like a success. Way to go! 

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