Home Health & Hospice Week

One-year delay to new diagnosis coding set gives providers some breathing room.The pressure may ease off for your ICD-10 implementation efforts for a while, but it won't go away altogether.In a final rule scheduled for publication in the Sept. 5 Federal Register, the Centers for Medi-care & Medicaid Services finalizes its proposed one-year delay to implementation of the new ICD-10 diagnosis coding set. CMS had announced a delay of unspecified length in February, then in April proposed the one-year deadline bump to October 2014."The change in the compliance date is intended to give covered healthcare providers and other covered entities more time to prepare and fully test their systems to ensure a smooth and coordinated transition by all covered entities," CMS notes in the rule. The one-year delay gives providers a break but also minimizes disruption and costs a longer postponement would cause."ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation is inev-itable, but today's news gives [...]