There are many concerns about the transition to ICD-10. One of those concerns is that medical coders will stop being productive after the October 1, 2015 transition deadline.
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Due to these productivity concerns, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) offered three pieces of advice for maintaining productive coding after the deadline.
To maintain productivity:
- Train your coders.
- Training should be continuous, and offer many opportunities to practice ICD-10. Dual coding offers a great opportunity to use ICD-10 codes.
- Hire more coders.
- Look for new coders through contract coding companies or through community college programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education.
- Utilize available technology.
- Make use of computer-assisted coding, clinical documentation improvement, and the apps geared to help transition to, and to use, ICD-10.
ICD-10 boasts more specifics and many more codes, which will likely make it more difficult for providers to find the codes they need. We help our clients put training measures in place to ease the upcoming transition.
Coding productivity is expected to take a dip during the transition. No one knows what the impact of the productivity dip will be, but it is important to prepare for it now.
October is just around the corner, and that means so is ICD-10.
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