This fall, the health care industry is in the middle of adapting to the HITECH Act and between now and October 1, 2015, the new ICD-10 code set for reporting diagnoses and procedures to payers must be adopted. ICD-10 is far more complex than ICD-9, breaking diagnosis codes down to a much finer level of granularity. For example, diabetes was a single code under ICD-9, but now there are 50 codes associated with that disease! While the current ICD-9 code set includes 13,800 three-to-five-digit, primarily numeric diagnostic codes, the ICD-10 code set includes approximately 69,000 three-to-seven-digit, alphanumeric codes. Learning all of this new information will be a significant challenge for all of our healthcare providers and their staffs.
According to the ICD-10 Snapshot Study, by the Aloft Group, February 2013, the four most dangerous risks during the transition to ICD-10 are:
- Insufficient training for staff
- Lack of preparation by vendors and payers
- Reduced physician and staff productivity
- Financial risk associated with high transition costs
Laurel Ridge Workforce Solutions actively supports your efforts to provide training for the healthcare industry and now especially in Medical Billing and Coding. We have several courses for new students in the Medical Billing and Coding career for certificates and certifications for NHA or AMCA, as well as an ICD-10 transition course for current professionals to upgrade their skills.
Learn More About Our Online Courses or See Our In-Classroom Courses Available for Healthcare and Wellness Career Training
