These past two years, hospitals and physician offices across the country were preparing for one of the biggest changes to occur in healthcare, the implementation of ICD-10 CM/PCS. Those organizations that had fallen behind on their implementation process were relieved to find out that the date of ICD-10 was to be pushed back from October of 2013 to October of 2014. This side of the spectrum had a big say in whether the date should be pushed back because of their lack of preparation in the first place. Government officials working with HHS didn’t view this as a lack of preparation but as a reason for HHS to push back the date because they too weren’t ready for the change. For those facilities that were ready for the change and did everything that was required basically received a bite in the butt when the announcement happened. They lost millions and millions of dollars on ICD-10 software that could have been put to other uses in the hospital at the time. The employees who went through days and days of training could have been working on their actual jobs instead of getting behind in their work. Students suffered a lot because the group of students in the coding fields had to be taught ICD-9 and ICD-10. Educators had to change their entire semesters worth of teaching to prepare the students for ICD-9. Some educators had planned to retire, leaving the facility without a proper coding instructor. I assume that trying to bring those teachers back was a nightmare.
I believe that the ICD-10 setback caused a lot of chaos during 2013 as well as the current setback for 2014 (aimed for October 2015). Students get the short end of the stick when it comes to the delay because we have to learn both code sets. This costs time that we don’t have and extra homework that we don’t need. This hurts students when trying to prepare for their careers because now that we have had two major setbacks, what’s the chance of having a third?
http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_049629.hcsp?dDocName=bok1_049629
garrettcolglazier 