Home Health & Hospice Week

Heavy-hitting trade group will weigh in.

Home care providers who aren't thrilled with the switch to ICD-10 have a very influential ally. The American Medical Association has made no secret of the fact that it is less than enthralled with the proposition of adopting ICD-10 as the new diagnosis coding system.

Background: Not only did the AMA's House of Delegates vote last year to repeal ICD-10 (which the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not adopt), but the group also applauded the news earlier this year that ICD-10 would be delayed from its original implementation date of 2013.

Now the AMA has taken additional steps to express its disillusionment with ICD-10, announcing that its House of Delegates adopted a policy to evaluate ICD-11 as a potential "alternative" to replace ICD-9, an AMA news release noted.

"ICD-10 coding will create unnecessary and significant financial and administrative burdens for physicians," said AMA President-elect Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven in a June 19 statement. "It is critical to evaluate alternatives to ICD-9 that will make for a less cumbersome transition for physicians and allow physicians to focus on their primary priority -- patient care. AMA voted today to consider ICD-11 as a possible alternative. The policy also asks the AMA and other stakeholders, such as [CMS], to examine other options."

A home care consultant advocated considering this point in her recent comments on CMS's final rule delaying ICD-10. "Why not wait and do an update with the World Health Organization (WHO) ICD-11-CM?" asked Rose Kimball with home care billing company Med-Care Administrative Ser-vices in Dallas in her comments (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XXI, No. 20). "This would allow the United States to not always be so far behind the rest of the 'forward thinking' industrialized countries. This further reduces the costs associated with two (2) changes necessitated in order to be in sync with WHO."

Stay tuned for developments in ICD-10 implementation.