ICD-10-CM Shows Grace Under Pressure

New system could show up in 3 years or less

Move over, ICD-9 - there's a better coding game in town. At least that's the story according to findings released Sept. 22 by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).
     
The two organizations conducted a field-test of the proposed ICD-10-CM code sets in a variety of healthcare settings using over 6,000 medical records between June 30 and Aug. 3 of this year. Their discovery: The lion's share of project participants - coding professionals - agree that the new ICD-10 system beat ICD-9 hands down and support phasing it into policy over the next three years.
     
Among the benefits of ICD-10 that the study revealed are improved clinical descriptions, clearer and more comprehensive notes, instructions, and guidelines, and applicability to various healthcare settings without changes in documentation practices. In addition, the education required to update staff on the new system is minimal. According to most participants, shifting to ICD-10 would only necessitate a maximum of 16 hours of training, which could take place either personally or online. For more than half the records, coders took the same time to code using ICD-10 as they did using ICD-9.

- Published on 2003-10-08