At a shade under eight months (232 days to be exact) before the ICD-10 implementation date, we head into the most romantic of months fully investing in our relationships to drive ICD-10 over the finish line yet mindful of the continued challenges and complexities of those relationships. We can present bearing and receiving gifts coated in large amounts of chocolate and sugar only to suffer the consequences of R73.9 (Unspecified Hyperglycemia). And should those gifts come from a secret admirer – a veritable certainty to cause R00.2 (Palpitations). Don’t fall head over heels though for you may just be stood up resulting in a bout of R45.83 (Excessive Crying) leading to I51.81 (Takotsubo Syndrome)… Yes, a broken heart.

On a more practical note, investments in relationships at the industry and legislative levels are creating hope and high expectations that all the hard work and advocacy are beginning to pay dividends. The chairs of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have committed to meeting the October 1, 2015 date, the General Accounting Office (GAO) commended the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on its readiness and outreach activities, and here at NYP, the collaboration among the numerous departments contributing to the transition and across our healthcare system colleagues and our two school-based faculty practice partners continues. A special congressional hearing on ICD-10 implementation is scheduled for Wednesday, February 11 and is expected to be another successful milestone on the industry’s journey to realizing ICD-10.

A list of NYP’s most recent and cumulative accomplishments continues to demonstrate the multidisciplinary effort to lift NYP and NYPHS onto this new language called ICD-10.

• Complete end-to-end claims testing with payers. We have completed end-to-end testing with Medicare in January and overall we have performed some level of testing with 8 of our largest payers accounting for 66% of our revenue base.
• Support Hospital operations with ICD-10 ready data and technology. The number of system to system interfaces tested for ICD-10 readiness more than doubled in the last month and 31% of all interfaces have been successfully tested.
• Enable provider support of ICD-10 documentation requirements. A new documentation selection tool that leverages physician friendly documentation concepts (and is mapped to ICD-10 codes) known as Intelligent Medical Object (IMO) has been deployed in pilot to select physicians for review and comment.
• Assess impact on quality and patient safety metrics.52% of all metrics affecting value-based purchasing (and Hospital reimbursement) have been tested.
• NYPHS readiness.Our most recent ICD-10 readiness survey results are available and provide NYP with a clear picture of how our healthcare system colleagues are progressing on their own readiness activities and where we can share and partner to gain efficiencies.

Other activities will continue to progress and expand under the assumption that no further delays shall occur. For a complete overview of the project status, click here to view the Project Scorecard.

Should you have questions about what you can be doing to get your department ready for ICD-10 or would like to request an in person presentation from the ICD-10 project team, please e-mail ICD10Help@nyp.org.

Happy Valentine’s Day!