The American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates voted on November 15th at the semi-annual policy making meeting in New Orleans to work vigorously to stop implementation of ICD-10 (The International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision), a new code set for medical diagnoses.
ICD-10-CM has about 69,000 codes and will replace the 14,000 ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes currently in use. “The implementation of ICD-10 will create significant burdens on the practice of medicine with no direct benefit to individual patients’ care,” said Peter W. Carmel, M.D., AMA president. At a time when we are working to get the be value possible for our health care dollar, this massive and expensive undertaking will add administrative expense and create unnecessary workflow disruptions.
The timing could not be worse as many physicians are working to implement electronic health records into their practices. We will continue working to help physicians keep their focus where it should be – on their patients.”
A 2008 study found that a small three-physician practice would need to spend $83,290 to implement ICD-10, and a 10-physician practice would spend $285,195 to make the coding change.
ICD-10 is scheduled to replace ICD-9 effective for all health insurance claims filed on or after October 1, 2013.
I THINK IMPLEMENTING THE WHOLE 5010 SYSTEM IS MEDICARE’S WAY OF CONFUSING EVERYONE INTO NOT BILLING MEDICARE FOR ANYTHING. IF IT’S COMPLICATED THEY FIGURE NO ONE WILL GO TO ALL THE TROUBLE OF INSTALLING IT. THEY SPEND MONEY NEEDLESSLY SO WE (TAXPAYERS) CAN PAY FOR THEIR STUPID MISTAKES NONE OF IT MAKES ANY SENSE, WHAT IS THEIR MAIN PURPOSE OF THE 5010 SYSTEM? I BET THERE IS NOT ONE PERSON WHO CAN ANSWER THIS QUESTION CLEARLY ENOUGH FOR ANYONE TO UNDERSTAND.