As Oct. 1 approaches my inbox fills more every day with junk mail from health IT vendors offering solutions to my presumed panic.
What panic? Well, as most inside medicine know, Oct. 1, 2015, is a red-letter day that will bring the biggest single change to medical billing in the last 30 years (thanks to Congress).
Although this might not sound too scary, it will most certainly affect every American, and it has the potential to bring chaos to the health care system.
The current medical coding system, which has been in place for decades, has had successive updates built on the one before in a logical sequence. But the new coding system, named ICD-10, will be a complete break from the nine versions before it.
What’s the Big Deal?
For starters, few outside medicine understand the complex process required for doctors to get paid by insurers for their work, but those who don’t understand are nevertheless affected by the process.
To get paid, a doctor must properly log any work done, along with the reason it was done (the diagnosis), with an assigned code chosen from huge manuals containing tens of thousands of codes.
Medical coding is complex and has no room for error (I know; it’s what I do). Pick the wrong code, and a doctor will not get paid. Pick too many wrong codes over time, and a doctor might be investigated by the government. Over the years, an entire industry has sprung up dedicated solely to medical coding.
The number of codes has increased from about 15,000 to almost 70,000, and no code that appears in ICD-9 is valid in ICD-10.
Decades of coding experience will be carelessly tossed out the window, leaving many doctors to spend precious time figuring the new system out rather than actually treating their patients.
Read the rest here:
https://archive.is/ihidR
http://dailysignal.com/2015/09/17/new-government-mandate-could-cause-chaos-within-health-care/