Thursday, December 1, 2011

ICD-10 versus OASIS-C: Culture Change versus Process Change


When we asked home care professionals if they thought ICD-10 conversion would be more problematic than OASIS-C conversion in our latest survey, 58 percent answered yes. In fact, 25 percent said ICD-10 conversion would be extremely more problematic than OASIS-C.

We wholeheartedly agree and here’s why: 

Conversion to OASIS-C was a process change in which clinicians had to learn a new set of standardized questions. ICD-10 on the other hand will require a culture change— one where clinicians must increase their written, narrative descriptions when assessing a patient. It’s not a matter of what box do I check, but completely changing the way they document.

Currently, some agencies do great narrative summaries. These agencies will have less of a culture change, but will still need to change terminology and some focuses. Many agencies, however, do a poor job at documenting. They may not see the need for it and want to focus their time on the patients, not paperwork. These agencies will have the most difficult time, as they will need to learn to document more, spend more time and effort writing narratives, be more specific and use the right terminology.

Overall, ICD-10 will require much more training for all parties, and a lot further in advance than OASIS-C. It will cause a decrease in productivity, even for the most trained agencies, as they become more vigilant to make sure they are doing everything correctly.

While you can’t totally avert all the problems associated with ICD-10, with proper preparation, you can significantly offset them. With OASIS-C, many did no training whatsoever until just a couple months before. This can’t be done when instituting a cultural change. With proper planning and training, and by addressing any current documentation issues beforehand, you can tailor your ICD-10 training to address these issues so they don’t become a much larger problem after conversion.

To learn more about what you can do right now to prepare for ICD-10 conversion go to: 10 Things You Should Be Doing Right Now to Prepare for ICD-10.

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