General Surgery Coding Alert

Question: I’ve heard that because Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use Requirement has been extended, ICD-10 implementation will be delayed as well. Is that true?

Tennessee Subscriber

Answer: No. Although CMS did extend Stage 2 of Meaningful Use through 2016 and Stage 3 through 2017, you won’t see such a delay for ICD-10. CMS has repeatedly stressed the fact that there will be no delay beyond the implementation date of Oct. 1, and the AMA recently urged physicians to prepare, since ICD-10 is a federal mandate and will take effect this year.

What you can do: If you want to determine whether your ICD-10 systems will be ready when the new diagnosis coding system takes effect, test out your ICD-10 coding skills this spring with a dry run that CMS plans to offer practices who want to submit sample ICD-10 claims, CMS announced in MLN Matters article MM8465, published on Nov. 1.

During the week of March 3 through March 7, 2014, your MAC will allow you to send in your test claims that include ICD-10 codes. If you have difficulty processing the claims, you’ll be able to contact the help desk to figure out what went wrong. In addition, you will get electronic acknowledgement of your test claims that will tell you whether they were accepted or rejected.

After the testing period ends, CMS will share information about the percentage of test claims that were accepted versus rejected, and will offer additional information about lessons learned during the testing period.

To read more about the ICD-10 test dates, visit www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNMattersArticles/Downloads/MM8465.pdf