Will ICD 10 Diagnosis Codes Complicate Research and Analytics?
As the countdown to converting to ICD diagnosis codes 10 has already started, it’s not surprising that healthcare organizations and practitioners have to invest time, money, and effort to implement the changes seamlessly within the application, and also recover some costs in meantime. At the same time, it gives rise to a number of pertinent questions – how will this change affect the organization’s practice management systems? Is the U.S. healthcare industry ready for the “biggest” change ever? How much time and money is necessary for this transition in medical coding procedures? Will ICD 10 affect research and analytics in real-time? CMS has finally validated compliance to ICD diagnosis codes, making it compulsory for all U.S. healthcare organizations and medical practitioners to convert to ICD 10 by October 2014. Noncompliance will lead to hefty penalties. However, according to a report, only few are prepared for the conversion, which demands considerable time and money for making necessary changes within the applications. The biggest challenge for organizations is to recover at least the cost of implementation in terms of healthcare practice management, resource implementation involved in software updates, and project management. On the other hand, there are no effective plans for data migration, which implies that older reports and data will continue to be coded as ICD 9 codes. And this is where the question arises regarding implication of such change on research, general searches, and clinical trials. One of the biggest advantages highlighted in favor of ICD-10-PCS and diagnosis codes is that it is significantly granular in terms of accuracy in diagnostic codes. However, if that is the case, the new research reports will not match with the older ones that use ICD 9. This data mismatch will limit research comparisons and they won’t be as granular as they should be. In such a scenario, wouldn’t it be most effective if healthcare organizations and their research comparisons could be made only to ICD 10 codes? It is certainly a laborious and hefty process to convert all ICD 9 codes to ICD 10 procedure codes and diagnosis codes. And it is indeed beyond the provider’s economic feasibility since it also includes upgrading the entire practice management software. The question arises here – are there any shortcuts to implement the transition from ICD 9 to ICD 10, such as selectively updating the medical codes for particular studies? Can there be any algorithm that can be used to improve ability to convert codes? Should there be some scope of analysis for cost or benefits within the research facilities for substantiating conversions? As these questions seem to be most pertinent, even a mere upgrade of medical practice management software or coding tools will not be enough for harnessing the potentials of ICD 10 to facilitate research. What will be the learning curve for ICD 10 coding procedures and is there any opportunity for lookup applications and learning aids to improve doctor’s productivity if they are look up to the latest medical coding standards? It is a matter to wait and see.