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 the healthcare community the certainty and clarity it needs to move forward with implementation, testing, and training," says the American Health Information Manage-ment Association in a release.

Bright side: While providers wait on ICD-10 implementation, no ICD-9-CM diagnosis code updates are planned for ICD-9 2013 (effective Oct. 1, 2012). There's a freeze in place until ICD-10-CM replaces ICD-9-CM.

Potential changes for the annual ICD-9-CM update usually appear at this time of year in CMS's Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) proposed rule, but this year's IPPS indicated you won't have to deal with any changes. Providers can focus on ICD-10 prep instead.

Note: The final rule is at www.ofr.gov/inspection.aspx under an 8/24 CMS entry.