What’s A MAtter with Them?

The AMA in their infinite wisdom voted in November of 2011 to “work vigorously to stop implementation of ICD-10.” They characterize the system as having no direct benefit to individual patient’s care and being a significant burden on the practice of medicine.

Well, they are half right; it will be a significant burden, one that has been coming for years. The announcement that it will go live on Oct. 1, 2013 has been in place for years, but the AMA has waited until now to say “we don’t want to!”

In a recent ICD10Watch.com poll, the majority of readers believe ICD-10 is written in stone and AMA’s efforts will not succeed. Only time will tell, but a quick tour of  ICD-10′s benefits is certainly in order.

Every civilized country in the world is on ICD-10 and has been for as much as 15 years. We are the lone laggards who still use the out dated, inadequate ICD-9 classification system. Oddly, the other countries seem to see a clinical benefit of having more accurate, granular information describing a patient’s health status.

Yes there is a lot going on in healthcare at this time, but I do not remember when there was a time without a lot going on. So, bite the bullet and do the work and the pain shall all pass.

HHS has helped the cause by delaying the meaningful use (MU) stage 2 deadline to 2014 for eligible professionals and hospitals. The announcement was made by Dept. of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The announcement was cited as part of an initiative to speed the use of health IT in physician office and hospitals to improve healthcare and create jobs nationwide. Both goals are admirable.

Physicians should take advantage of this “breathing room” and implement ICD-10. It seems the large effort to try and stop ICD-10 could be better utilized to help implement ICD-10