Is ICD-10 testing much of a priority in the healthcare industry?
It should be. We know that. But the latest findings in a survey by compiled by the American Health Information Management Association, the eHealth Initiative, and vendor Edifecs, found cause for concern.
Here’s how Edifecs delivered it:
• 40 percent of respondents reported they would begin end-to-end testing by the end of 2014
• 25 percent reported plans to begin end-to-end testing by the end of 2015
• 41 percent of those with no plans for end-to-end testing said they had no knowledge of how to perform testing.
Those statistics come for 349 responses spanning acute care hospitals, consultants, clinic and physician practices, payers and vendors.
The good news is that respondents see the value in granular data for research and quality control measures. Hopefully that’s not an opinion held by just the healthcare vendors and payers.
Of course respondents recognized the short-term problems such as:
• Coding patient encounters
• Adjudicating reimbursement claims
• Negotiating contracts between health plans and providers
Back to the matter of testing. So 40 percent should begin end-to-end testing by the end of this year. Good. But that timeline for the 25 percent is a little fuzzy. By the end of 2015? They do realize that the deadline is all-but set as October 1, 2015?
Which makes me believe they have no real plans for end-to-end testing. Because if 41 percent of the respondents who don’t say they have end-to-end testing plans don’t know where to start, I’m betting a similar percentage applies.
Date: 3 July, 2014