10 Things You Should Be Doing Now to Prepare for ICD-10

As a remote coding agency focused on home care, we know and understand the importance of ICD-10 and its specific implications for home care agencies. We’ve been thinking about it since 2007. In fact, it was one of our reasons for starting Daymarck. Implementation may not be until October 2013, but home care agencies need to develop a plan now to make sure they are fully prepared.

Here are 10 things that you should be doing right now:

1)   Start talking to all your vendors (point of care, EHR, billing, etc.) to see what they are doing to prepare. They should be able to tell you their clear plan leading up to implementation.

2)   Take a look at any planned provider or system changes and decide if you should do them before, during or after ICD-10 implementation. Ask yourself how this change will be impacted by ICD-10.

3)   Identify your current coding work flow (who is doing how many codes) and what impact ICD-10 will have on it. Then decide what your new workflow process will be.

4)   Decide how you will train your staff on ICD-10. Will it be in-house or external? If you are a Daymarck customer, our training resources will be available to you so you don’t have to worry about this.

5)   Take a hard look at your personnel and determine if they are up to the challenge. This may mean you will need to hire new people or use an outside partner. Make sure your staff is committed to the change and not just doing it to keep their jobs.

6)   To ensure people are committed to the transition, communicate and start conversations about ICD-10 and its benefits and impact with your staff. Communicating with clinicians should be a very strong focus, as many are not up to speed on the necessity and reasoning for the change to ICD-10.

7)   Determine how ICD-10 will impact your budget. Budget constraints can include decreased productivity, training costs, and longer time getting Request for Anticipated Payments (RAPs) out meaning decreased cash flow.  For smaller agencies with limited cash flow, delays in getting RAPs out can be detrimental.

8)   Cultivate the relationship between coders and clinicians as ICD-10 will force them to work more closely together. Good relationship and communication between these two groups will help overcome decreased productivity. While these two groups may have different goals, encourage them to think of the big picture.  

9)   Decide how you will overcome a decrease in productivity. Our recent survey showed the average decrease will last 7 months. With decreased productivity and the same staff, you will either get less assessments out per day or force personnel to work longer hours which can lead to burnout. Have a plan to make sure both your staff is taken care of and your assessments are getting done.

10)Take a deep breath. It may seem overwhelming now, but with proper planning and communication, we’ll get through it together. And when it’s all said and done it will be great for the industry.

Help Home Care Help Healthcare

We hope this helps as you and your organization think about conversion to ICD-10. As a leader in the home care industry, we are dedicated to helping make home care a big part of the answer in solving our country’s healthcare challenges. This monumental shift to ICD-10 is a big step to improving our operations as an industry and will improve the level of care that this nation needs.

ICD-10 Survey

Please visit the results of our ICD-10 survey administered during the National Association for Home Care and Hospice Show in October 2011. It should give you more insight into the challenges and opportunities as we transition as an industry to ICD-10. Go to http://www.daymarck.com/icd10/.