On the afternoon of Thursday, July 31, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a press release announcing the finalization of a rule making October 1, 2015 the deadline for clinicians, patient care organizations, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses to transition to the use of the ICD-10 (the tenth revision of the International Classification of Diseases), coding system, from the current ICD-9 system. That date had widely been anticipated, since the U.S. Congress passed legislation back on March 31, which forced a delay of at least one year in the deadline, from October 1, 2014.
The July 31 HHS press release stated that “This deadline allows providers, insurance companies and others in the healthcare industry time to rmp up their operations to ensure their systems and business processes are ready to go on Oct. 1, 2015.”
In addition, the press release quoted Marilyn Tavenner, R.N., administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), as saying, “ICD-10 codes will provide better support for patient care, and improve disease management, quality measurement and analytics. For patients under the care of multiple providers, ICD-10 can help promote care coordination,” she said in a statement in the press release.
The press release offered additional information about ICD-10 here.
