About eight in 10 healthcare organizations have said that the ICD-10 transition—now two months in—has gone smoothly, according to a KPMG LLP survey.
The survey of 298 attendees of the Nov. 9 KPMG webcast, “ICD-10: Just the Beginning,” found that 28 percent of respondents said the transition has been smooth and another 51 percent found "a few technical issues, but overall successful." About 11 percent described the transition as a "failure to operate in an ICD-10 environment."
Survey respondents said the largest challenges they see with ICD-10 include rejected medical claims, clinical documentation and physician education, reduced revenue from coding delays and information technology fixes. The survey found 42 percent of respondents said all of these challenges are part of ICD-10. Only 11 percent of claimants said they did not expect those challenges to arise. A report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) last month said that as of Oct. 27, 10 percent of claims were being rejected and only .09 percent were rejected due to invalid ICD-10 codes.
With ICD-10 going live, 46 percent of respondents said they were thinking of pursuing initiatives in clinical documentation improvement, revenue cycle optimization, and electronic health record (EHR) and IT system optimization. The survey found that 25 percent were pursuing none of those options.
However, along with the investment in time, money and technology among healthcare organizations, the transition has been beset by delays impacting the bottom line of many healthcare organizations, the survey found. "Organizations are beginning to see dips in cash flow due to payers delaying the processing of ICD-10 claims while they ensure their ability to appropriately adjudicate these claims, while others are seeing an increase in claim denials over pre-ICD-10 levels," Craig Greenberg, KPMG director, advisory, said in a statement.
Referring specifically to the 11 percent of organizations that said they are struggling with the transition, Todd Ellis, managing director at KPMG said, "The communities these organizations serve depend upon their healthcare providers to meet their medical needs and we need to help them through these challenges. ICD-10's implementation was a lengthy process and unfortunately they will address these issues or face greater competitive disadvantages in measuring quality and reduced cash flow."
