What are some of the overlooked unforeseen costs of implementation?
- Practices may secure cash flow savings or a line of credit to help weather the storm during the transition; it is suggested that practices have a minimum of the equivalent of 30 days of operating capital on hand
- Measure and budget for money and time
- Education and training tools
- Printing of hard paper items such as forms and training materials
- Resource materials
- Federal, state and local agencies
- Order entry
- Health plans – coverage documents and guidelines (update any benefits or terms tied to specific diagnostic and service codes – i.e. carve outs, case rates and capitated services)
- Patient registration
What are reasonable estimates for loss of revenue and productivity during conversion, training and testing?
- Expect an initial 30-40% decrease in productivity that will never fully be made up because of the sheer volume of codes in ICD-10
- ICD-10 contains 69,000 codes compared to 13,000 codes in ICD-9
- Technology and training can help make up most of the difference and get you close to where you were before the ICD-10 transition
Can you give an example?
- A mid-sized physician practice (6-50 providers) could incur as much as $300,000 in hard costs to adopt ICD-10
- This total may increase to $3 million for large groups (51+ providers)
Source: Presence Health ICD-10 Presentation, 2/26/14