The ACC has been educating members over the last year about the upcoming switch in the coding classification system for diseases from ICD-9 to ICD-10. This switch, which takes effect Oct. 1, 2013, is huge. The health care system will go from using 17,000 diagnosis and procedure codes to using over 155,000. The Health Business Blog recently featured a podcast interview between David Williams, who writes the blog and is co-founder of MedPharma Partners LLC, and Ray Desrochers, HealthEdge COO, on the upcoming switch to ICD-10 and why it’s such a big deal. Desrochers makes a good analogy of the switch to ICD-10 as the modern health care version of Y2K:

"ICD-10 has been called the Y2K of health care.  ICD-10 ... introduces a whole different level of complexity that most of the organizations out there today are not ready to deal with.  Remember that many of the technology platforms that are running today’s payer organizations are 20, 25, even 30 years old. When you start to talk about change, particularly significant change like this, they’re not able to easily accommodate that.

Also, similar to Y2K, you’re not only talking about a larger number of codes, you’re also, at the same time, about codes that are much longer than their ICD9 counterparts.  So you start to think about this and you go through all of the same experiences that existed in Y2K in terms of needing to analyze the databases, needing to expand fields, needing to migrate and convert data, etc. So that’s what organizations across the country are looking for as they head towards the 2013 ICD-10 standard." [The full interview transcript is available on the Health Business Blog.]

Because of the longer codes, the transaction standards used for electronic health care claims, Version 4010/4010A, must be upgraded to Version 5010 by Jan. 1, 2012. ICD-10 codes must be used for all health care services provided and hospital inpatient procedures performed in the U.S. on or after Oct. 1, 2013. After that, claims can’t be paid.

The ACC has resources available on our website to help members get ready for the transition, which you need to start now. Check out: What You Need to Know about ICD-10 and especially the ICD-10 Checklist.