ICD-10 Delay Finalized with New Unique Plan Identifier

Another big week for healthcare IT and HHS. First, we got the meaningful use stage 2 final rule and now we have the official ICD-10 delay (See our previous post about the proposed ICD-10 delay). Here’s a quote from the announcement:

By delaying the compliance date of ICD-10 from Oct. 1, 2013 to Oct. 1, 2014, we are allowing more time for covered entities to prepare for the transition to ICD-10 and to conduct thorough testing.

This will be a welcome announcement for many in healthcare. Edifecs sent me the following comment about the delay which I think sums up most people’s feelings.

Edifecs commends HHS for finalizing its ruling on the ICD-10 one-year delay. We believe HHS has made the right decision and that a delay of this length strikes a fair compromise in meeting the needs of those healthcare entities that have already started down the ICD-10 path and those that have failed to either begin or show much progress. This one-year delay will give more time to those who need it and will also help those who were on track avoid the excessive costs an even longer delay would have created. Edifecs is encouraging its customers, and the entire healthcare industry, to continue moving forward with their ICD-10 implementations in order to meet the mandate ahead of schedule or on time.

That’s a pretty good word of caution. 2 years seems pretty far away, but that time will pass quickly.

Bigger news might even be the New national unique health plan identifier (HPID) that is being put in place. Sebelius explains, “These new standards are a part of our efforts to help providers and health plans spend less time filling out paperwork and more time seeing their patients.” I’ll be interested to learn more about this identifier and what insurance plans think of it.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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