What will ICD-10 cost doctors?

A cost analysis estimates that the switch to ICD-10 (via Dr. Val) will cost over $80,000 for a small practice with three physicians.

Just what doctors need, with declining reimbursements and the pressure to adopt expensive electronic records.

To put that in context, the upcoming change will “have a greater financial impact than some other high-profile federal mandates, including the National Provider Identifier number and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.”

Worse, get ready for more paperwork and longer hours as “physicians would incur permanent additional costs associated with more rigorous documentation that would increase each physician’s workload by up to 4 percent.”

If you’re a medical coder, get ready for a boom in business. Everyone else isn’t so lucky.

topics: icd-10, coding

Comments

medrecgal
Frankly, the idea of ICD-10 scares me, too, and I’m one such coder! It will be like basically having to start from square one, because of the huge differences between it and the ICD-9 I was trained with. I’m sure the docs and PAs will be a bit miserable for a while, too, when we do finally make the transition, particularly those who’ve been in practice for decades and those who “don’t care for” the rules part of coding. (Sometimes they’re the same people, but not always.) But ICD-9 is terrifically outdated and not appropriate anymore for most of the applications it’s used for. So even though it will be a royal nuisance, it’s likely a necessary one. Hopefully in the end after all the dust settles, the finer diagnostic gradations in ICD-10 will help everyone in terms of money and productivity…but it will be interesting to see how the content of the notes practitioners write in the record will have to evolve to accommodate the new system.
Anonymous
Of course those who feed off the complexity of the abomination think that it is “necessary”. It will do nothing for the productivity of doctors. Getting a history, doing an exam, and prescribing treatment require the same amount of time regardless of how finely it is coded.
Properly speaking, the notes that we write are for the purposes of enhancing the quality of medical care. Unnecessary information reduces their value for medical care because it makes it less likely that subsequent users of the notes will find what they need. It also risks more damaging compromises of privacy which is a core Hippocratic obligation as much as is quality care itself.
All other uses of the medical record, however beneficial in other respects, are parasitic to the core function and like all parasites, weaken it.
For the essential functions of third parties, for physicians ICD-9 even could be drastically simplified. All payers really need to know is if it is a covered illness or a non-covered condition–not every nuance about it. CPT could and ought to be scrapped entirely and replaced by the same single piece of information used by every other professional in the western world–how much time was spent on the service.
All of the rest not only detracts from medical care, but is a threat to freedom and privacy as it gives the monster the information it needs to exercise tyrannical control.
Chuck Brooks
And then ICD-11 will come along.
Anonymous
Somewhere, a name linked to a SSN, linked to a DOB, linked to an ICD-10 code, linked to a CPT code, linked to a date of service. Somewhere searchable, ultimately, somewhere where there will be a breach–nothing is perfectly secure ever.
Anonymous
I haven’t paid off the computer system needed to accommodate the HIPAA requirements of 2005; now this.
Tyranny!

What will ICD-10 cost doctors?

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