ICD-10 Delayed

As of today, both the House and Senate approved a bill that will delay the implementation of ICD-10 by at least one year.  The bill is now pending President Obama’s signature, who is expected to sign it into law.

The bill, H.R. 4302, mainly creates a temporary “fix” to the Medicare sustainable growth rate.  Medicare physicians faced a 24 percent reimbursement cut beginning April 1.  This bill replaces the 24% cut with a 0.5 percent increase through March 31st 2015.

The bill also contains a section stating that the Department of Health and Human Services cannot adopt the ICD-10 code set until October 1st 2015.

HCA will continue to send articles and tips for successful ICD-10 coding.  However, we highly recommend that providers and their staff use this extra time to continue familiarizing themselves with the new code set.  Successful billing under ICD-10 will be highly dependent on the providers understanding of the new system in order to select the most appropriate codes.