Earlier this week the Michigan State Medical Society hosted an ICD-10 Summit to a sold-out crowd of physicians and practice managers.
The MSMS ICD-10 Summit provided a basic overview of ICD-10 guidelines and how they differ from ICD-9. Resources were made available to attendees for implementing ICD-10 in a practice along with educational resources for proper training. The Michigan health plans also presented on their readiness, their testing process and what they have already learned.
The International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) is a revision of the ICD-9-CM system which physicians and other providers currently use to code all diagnoses, symptoms, and procedures recorded in physician practices and hospitals. The ICD-10-CM revision has more than 68,000 diagnostic codes, compared to the 13,000 found in ICD-9-CM. The revision also includes twice as many categories, and is more specific in identifying treatment. For example, ICD-10 provides codes to distinguish between a left or right leg; ICD-9 does not.
The overall need to transition to ICD-10 at this time is due to the age of ICD-9. ICD-9 was developed in the 1970s and has been used widely in the U.S. since 1978. The age of the ICD-9 code sets means that it does not completely reflect all advances in medical technology and current medical knowledge. Another driver for replacing ICD-9 is the increased specificity of ICD-10, which is desired by some stakeholders for research and quality improvement efforts to provide better data for identifying diagnosis trends, public health needs, epidemic outbreaks and bioterrorism events.
Transitioning to ICD-10 affects all departments in a practice and hospital. From setting up their systems to accepting ICD-10 codes to training and implementation, the ICD-10 transition could take six months to a year for complete integration.
If you missed the MSMS ICD-10 Summit, please register today for our "Prepare for ICD-10" webinar, which will be held on July 6, 2015 from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. >>