In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange has outlined 13 ways HHS can help minimize negative financial, workflow and operational consequences of the Oct. 1, 2015 transition to ICD-10.
WEDI's recommendations include:
1. Establish credibility with the industry by finding a way to guarantee the transition will not be delayed again.
2. Demonstrate CMS itself is ready to handle ICD-10 claims by publicly disclosing testing timeframes and related data.
3. Perform more end-to-end testing and share results publicly.
4. Encourage non-covered entities such as workers' compensation plans to switch to ICD-10 so providers won't have to maintain ICD-9 coding systems to share claims with these entities.
5. Advertise the benefits of switching to ICD-10 and that many providers will not need to utilize the entire code set.
6. Develop educational resources for providers on clinical documentation improvement to help ease the transition.
7. Establish a selective private-sector testing process that will demonstrate each aspect of the new coding system is working correctly.
8. Use the time afforded by the delay to conduct limited ICD-10 pilots with willing organizations to mitigate concerns about the transition.
9. Support WEDI's Practice Management System Accreditation Program to give providers more confidence their IT systems will be able to support ICD-10 coding.
10. Establish milestones to help better evaluate industry readiness in the lead-up to the transition.
11. Engage regional extension centers to provide assistance to smaller or rural providers.
12. Expand marketing and communication efforts to reach a larger audience.
13. Support WEDI's industry outreach efforts.
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