I think it has been mis read. Here is what was posted on the AMA website yesterday. If you read it closely it does not say there is a grace period for the use of ICD-10 CM. It does indicate that CMS will be lenient with code errors.
Implementation of the ICD-10 code set is just around the corner, with a hard deadline of Oct. 1. Many physicians have been concerned about adopting this code set because of the heavy investment of time and resources and the potential for claims disruptions that could interfere with patient care.
Fortunately, the AMA has secured provisions that will ease this transition, particularly for physicians in practices with limited resources.
In response to our extensive communication of physicians’ concerns, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today that it is making several critical changes to the transition period so that physicians can continue to provide high-quality patient care without risking their livelihood.
These changes address:
Claim denials. For the first year ICD-10 is in place, Medicare claims will not be denied solely based on the specificity of the diagnosis codes as long as they are from the appropriate family of ICD-10 codes.
This means that Medicare will not deny payment for these unintentional errors as practices become accustomed to ICD-10 coding. In addition, Medicare claims will not be audited based on the specificity of the diagnosis codes as long as they are from the appropriate family of codes. This transition period will give physicians and their practice teams time to get up to speed on the more complicated code set.
Both Medicare Administrative Contractors and Recovery Audit Contractors will be required to follow this policy.
Quality-reporting penalties. Similar to claim denials, CMS will not subject physicians to penalties for the Physician Quality Reporting System, the value-based payment modifier or meaningful use based on the specificity of diagnosis codes as long as they use a code from the correct ICD-10 family of codes.
In addition, penalties will not be applied if CMS experiences difficulties calculating quality scores for these programs as a result of ICD-10 implementation.
Payment disruptions. If Medicare contractors are unable to process claims as a result of problems with ICD-10, CMS will authorize advance payments to physicians.
