AT A HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE HEALTH SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
WASHINGTON (FRONTLINE MEDICAL NEWS) – The transition to the ICD-10 coding set should take place as planned on Oct. 1, witnesses testified at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health.
The message was welcome to committee leadership, who invited testimony almost solely from experts who support that position.
Subcommittee members from both sides of the aisle expressed a desire to not delay the implementation any further, though some at the Feb. 11 hearing questioned whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was ready for the transition.
Subcommittee member Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), an ob.gyn., said he had no questions about the readiness of Medicare contractors and insurance companies for the transition, but “all roads eventually lead to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And if you will pardon me, that does appear to be a weak link in the chain because from HealthCare.gov to the Sunshine Act reporting website, when CMS flips a switch, something breaks.”
While no representative from the CMS testified, a recent report from the Government Accountability Office suggested that the agency is positioned to make the transition to ICD-10 by the Oct. 1 deadline, although continued testing is warranted. That report was commissioned by the Senate Finance Committee, which also expressed support for an Oct. 1 start date for ICD-10.
Kristi Matus, chief financial and administrative officer for Athenahealth , testified to the general readiness of the health IT community to make the switch to ICD-10. The government should either “maintain the current date for ICD-10 implementation or cancel it once and for all. Pull the trigger or pull the plug,” Ms. Matus said.
Dr. William J. Terry Sr., a urologist from Mobile, Ala., testified on behalf of the American Urological Association and expressed concern that not all physicians are ready. He suggested that a transition period might allow physicians and other providers to run ICD-9 and ICD-10 simultaneously to ensure that physicians do not inadvertently lose any payments because of coding errors that might occur as they learn the new system.
