ICD-10 delay language passes House, Senate vote Monday

Dear ACDIS members and CDI professionals,

A new bill introduced in the House and Senate includes a small, rather buried section that would delay implementation of ICD-10 for another year, to Oct. 1, 2015.

The main focus of the bill is a fix to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), which is necessary. This small provision of the bill is not. The bill is expected to go to the Senate floor tomorrow, March 31, for a vote.

In accordance with the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), and several other national healthcare organizations we urge our members to contact your local congressman and request removal of the ICD-10 delay provision. See the AHIMA release here, which includes a lookup tool to find the number of your local representatives: http://www.capwiz.com/ahima/callalert/index.tt?alertid=63161891.

ICD-10 is necessary, and it’s coming. Further delay only hinders our ability to better capture the necessary specificity of the conditions our physicians and facilities are treating today. It also hurts the work many of our members have already done to prepare for the Oct. 2014 deadline, and undermines our credibility as CDI specialists. And there is the cost to consider: CMS estimates a one-year delay could result in additional costs of $1 billion to $6.6 billion.

Please contact your representative today and ask them to take the ICD-10 provision out of this bill. Help us spread the word and tell Congress, tell your colleagues, tell your friends why ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation is so important to the work you do every day.

Thanks,

Brian Murphy

Director, ACDIS