CIOs feeling anxious about ICD-10

“A survey conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) finds that hospital CIOs feel they are unprepared for the switch to ICD-10 code sets.
The survey, conducted in November, featured responses from about 72 hospital CIOs. Of those who responded, 60 percent said their HIT vendors have not alerted them to the proposed new regulations and timelines for ICD-10/5010 implementations.”
Article
Molly Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 30 December 2008

CHIME: CIOs Support ICD-10 but Doubt Readiness

“A survey of hospital CIOs conducted by the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) shows that a majority haven’t heard from their IT vendors about their plans for updating products to comply with the new ICD-10 code sets, and the related updated X12 standard, Version 5010 and NCPDP D.0 for HIPAA-related transaction standards.”
Article
Healthcare Informatics, 24 December 2008

Beware the Challenges of ICD-10

“Health information management departments should be working now to get ready for the ICD-10 code sets, says Rita Bowen, enterprise HIM director at Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, Tenn. The Department of Health and Human Services called for mandated adoption of the comprehensive new sets of standard codes for diagnoses and procedures by October 2011. ”
Article
Health Data Management, 1 December 2008

ICD-10 - The future of the medical coding system…

“This past week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the plan of U.S. government regulators to overhaul the aging coding system, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), that physicians and hospitals currently use to bill insurers. The new system, called ICD-10, to which most of the world’s developed countries have already adopted, is expected to result in a 10-fold increase in the number of codes for ailments and procedures. One extreme example from the current system is the single billing code for angioplasty, which will grow to 1,170 billing codes to provide more detailed descriptions as to the locations and devices involved. The new system of 155,000 codes consists of both diagnosis and medical procedures codes, and while hospitals use both types of codes, physicians use only diagnostic codes from the current system. Use of 9,200 codes from the American Medical Association (AMA) that were created in the 1960s are still being relied upon for procedure codes. The current coding system is simply no longer expandable.”
Article
Erik Gfesser, NVISIA, 21 November 2008

Why We Need 1,170 Codes for Angioplasty

“Government regulators are expected soon to overhaul the aging coding system that doctors and hospitals use to bill insurers — a switch that many in health care say is necessary, but that could initially cause headaches for consumers and their doctors.”
Article
Jane Zhang, The Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2008

ICD-10 Coding, is this a reality or a myth at present?

“I am sure we are all in agreement that the new codes will allow for a better reporting system, but let’s first take a look at today and what is needed for a successful roll out, first off, money, something everyone seems to be running short of today.
Second, is education, doctors, medical staff, etc. will need to be trained on how to use the new coding system.  Yes we have all seen the reports and information on the web, but that doesn’t make much difference until the actual day comes to where the codes are  implemented.  The system is using a new group of algorithms, in other words, formulas and to roll out a system that millions will be required to use without adequate training would be a shame.”
Article
The Medical Quack, 11 November 2008

ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED, a guest blog

“Knowing that yesterday’s blog about ICD-10 would raise questions about how HITSP will incorporate ICD-10 into its future work products as well as the role of SNOMED verses ICD-10 as a clinical vocabulary, I asked one of our HITSP Technical Committee Co-chairs to give me his perspective. Jamie Ferguson leads standards efforts for Kaiser and he gave me his permission to publish his personal thoughts on ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED, which provide helpful background about the issues.”
Article
John Halamka, Life as a Healthcare CIO, 30 October 2008

AHIMA, AHA back move to ICD-10 as other groups cite high costs

“The Advance Medical Technology Association, American Hospital Association and  American Health Information Management Association urged Congress in a letter Tuesday not to delay adoption of the new ICD-10 diagnosis and coding system.”
Article
Diana Manos, Healthcare IT News, 29 October 2008

AHIMA Reverses ICD-10 Position, Asks HHS for One More Year

“The American Health Information Management Association has reversed its support of HHS’ proposed timeline for ICD-10 code set adoption and now is asking for an additional year to make the transition, Modern Healthcare reports.”
Article
iHealthBeat, 27 October 2008

AHA, GPO onboard for ICD-10 implementation

“The American Hospital Association and Premier joined the American Health Information Management Association in supporting HHS’ proposal to upgrade the International Classification of Diseases coding system, saying the codes bring with them enhanced information technology and patient safety.”
Article
Jean DerGurahian, Modern Healthcare, 22 October 2008

‘When’ is critical to driving the switch to ICD-10, says CMS chief

“Be serious about the date.”
That’s the advice of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service Acting Administrator Kerry Weems, when asked Tuesday about how CMS could help drive the conversion of healthcare diagnostic and billing codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 15 October 2008

ICD-10 Timeline Opponents Cite Costs

“Seeking a delay in implementation of the new ICD-10 code sets for health care claims, a coalition of organizations that includes the Medical Group Management Association contends the codes would be too costly to adopt quickly. The federal government has proposed implementing the codes by October 2011, a deadline the coalition describes as unworkable and expensive.”
Article
Health Data Management, 14 October 2008

Time to swallow ICD-10 pill, say AHIMA leaders

“The American Health Information Management Association leadership wants to be clear: Even though it will cost millions of dollars and the process is likely to be disruptive, U.S. healthcare must embrace a new, expanded code for diagnostics and billing.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 14 October 2008

Blues Launch Slow-Down Campaign for Code Changes

“The BlueCross and BlueShield Association, representing the largest chunk of health care insurers in the country, is lobbying the federal government to slow down.
BCBS agrees that insurers and health care providers need to revamp the coding system used to identify diagnosis and treatment of millions of patients. All players realize that moving into a digital age will require fundamental changes in how information is stored and transferred.”
Article
George Lauer, iHealthBeat, 11 September 2008

ICD-10 deadline: ‘unworkable’ or ‘at long last’?

“The Medical Group Management Association, which represents 21,500 members, says the government’s proposed Oct 1, 2011 deadline for the healthcare industry to convert from ICD-9 code sets to ICD-10 is too short.”
Article
Bernie Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 20 August 2008

Opposition to ICD-10 timetable emerges

“Doctors and health insurers are taking issue with the government’s proposed schedule for converting to a new system for coding diagnoses and treatments.
Representatives of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the American Medical Association and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) said today that the three-year transition the Health and Human Services Department has proposed for transitioning from International Classification of Diseases Version 9 to ICD-10 is not long enough.”
Article
Nancy Ferris, Government Health IT, 19 August 2008

HHS calls for adoption of ICD-10 codes

“The Health and Human Services Department has proposed replacing the 30-year-old codes for recording medical diagnoses and billing for treatment with the updated International Classification of Diseases code set by October 2011.”
Article
Nancy Ferris, Government Health IT, 18 August 2008

HISA2008 - health records and standards

“The first plenary speaker for Friday is given by Lee Seldon from Swinburne University of Technology in Sarawak on the topic of ‘FOSS, health records, infrastructure and ’standards”. He started from the premise that the purpose of the health record is (or should be) to benefit the patient, rather than simply the Health Ministry/Department. He referenced ISO 18308 in respect of criteria/architecture for EHRs and gave a detailed overview of standards and coding (such as ICD-9 and SNOMED) that deal with health records. He said that the greatest most common denominator for standards in English, with XML being the second most common.”
Article
Peter Murray, Hi-Blogs.info, 20 June 2008

Reliability of diagnoses coding with ICD-10

“Objective
Reliability of diagnoses coding is essential for the use of routine data in a national health care system. The present investigation compares reliability of diagnoses coding with ICD-10 between three groups of coding subjects.
Method
One hundred and eighteen students coded 15 diagnoses lists, 27 medical managers from hospitals 34 discharge letters, and 13 coding specialists 12 discharge letters. Agreement in principal diagnosis was assessed using Cohen’s Kappa and the fraction of coincidences over the number of pairs, agreement for the full set of diagnoses with a previously developed measure pom.
Results
Kappa values were fair (managers) or moderate (coders) for terminal codes with 0.27 and 0.42 (agreement 29.2% versus 46.8%), substantial for the chapter level with 0.71 and 0.72 (agreement 78.3% versus 80.8%). pom was lower for the full set of diagnoses than for principal diagnoses, for example in case of managers with 0.21 versus 0.29 for terminal codes. Best results were achieved by students coding diagnoses lists. In summary, the results are remarkably lower than in earlier publications.
Conclusion
The refinement of the ICD-10 accompanied by innumerous coding rules has established a complex environment that leads to significant uncertainties even for experts. Use of coded data for quality management, health care financing, and health care policy requires a remarkable simplification of ICD-10 to receive a valid image of health care reality.”
Article
Jürgen Stausberg, Nils Lehmann, Dirk Kaczmarek and Markus Stein, International Journal of Medical Informatics
Volume 77, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 50-57, doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2006.11.005

Standardized Semantic Markup for Reference Terminologies, Thesauri and Coding Systems: Benefits for distributed E-Health Applications

Simon Hoelzer MD(1,2), Ralf K. Schweiger PhD(1,2), Raymond Liu(3), Dirk Rudolf(1), Joerg Rieger(1), Joachim Dudeck MD(1,2)
(1)Institute of Medical Informatics, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Germany
(2)HL7 User Group, Germany
(3)University of California, Department of Medicine, San Francisco, USA

Abstract:

With the introduction of the ICD-10 as the standard for diagnosis, the development of an electronic representation of its complete content, inherent semantics and coding rules is necessary. Our concept refers to current efforts of the CEN/TC 251 to establish a European standard for hierarchical classification systems in healthcare. We have developed an electronic representation of the ICD-10 with the extensible Markup Language (XML) that facilitates the integration in current information systems or coding software taking into account different languages and versions. In this context, XML offers a complete framework of related technologies and standard tools for processing that helps to develop interoperable applications.