ICD-10 – An industry readiness survey reveals that the health care industry is well behind the suggested milestones for the October 1, 2014 ICD-10 compliance deadline. Is your organization on track to meet the upcoming deadline?

With little less than a year until the ICD-10 implementation deadline the results from The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange’s (WEDI) annual ICD-10 industry readiness survey reveals that a large percentage of providers are behind in meeting CMS’s ICD-10 Implementation timeline goals.

Some key results from the survey reveal that:

• Only half of the health plans expect to begin external testing by the end of 2013. The 2012 survey results revealed that all health plans had expected to begin in 2013.
• About half of the providers responded that they did not know when testing would occur and over two-fifths of provider respondents indicated they did not know when they would complete their impact assessment and business changes.
• About two thirds of vendors indicate they plan to begin customer review and beta testing by the end of 2013. This is similar to the number who expected to begin by the end of 2012 in the prior survey.

End-to-end testing is a critical component of the implementation process and without this critical testing providers are at risk for major setbacks and possible revenue loss come October 1, 2014.

Our Take

The financial impact to healthcare organizations as a result of the upcoming ICD-10 implementation deadline of October 1, 2014 is too significant to ignore and for this reason it is critical to set and meet key ICD-10 implementation milestones. Based on our experience with hundreds of IT vendors, Payors, and the major clearing houses, organizations and providers must conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing starting at least six (6) months prior to the implementation deadline to identify  potential problems and design contingency plans to stay in operation if vendors or counterparties fail.     Institutions that conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing prior to go live will minimize operational disruptions and  reduce potential net reimbursement impacts.

Start today! Provident can help you plan and conduct comprehensive ICD-10 end-to-end testing to ensure your organization is prepared to prosper come October 1, 2014.