On March 27, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to delay the implementation of the ICD-10 coding system for hospitals and providers – which was to replace the current ICD-9 coding system – by one year. Originally, all hospitals and providers were to have implemented ICD-10 by October 2014. The new deadline for implementing ICD-10 is October 2015.
The Senate passed the legislation on April 1, and the bill was signed into law April 2. The law is called the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 and is effective immediately.
How Does This Affect Texas Children’s?
The hospital has been working on its education plan for providers for more than a year. The education component will move forward as planned.
Providers still can access the education modules that explain how the new coding system will affect their specialties, beginning this month.
What does change is the deadline to complete the education courses. That deadline has been extended to July 2015.
In the meantime, the hospital will continue to train its billing staff on the ICD-10 system, and will continue to make system upgrades to the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR). Those upgrades ensure that our EHR is compatible with the ICD-10 system.
By continuing with our efforts to make the switch to ICD-10, the transition will be that much easier come next October.