Comments on ICD-10-PCS adoption mostly positive
Most organizations supported coding standard
On May 17, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) held a public hearing in Baltimore relating to the adoption of ICD-10-PCS as the national coding standard for inpatient procedure coding. More than 100 people attended the meeting and had positive comments to make. Last month’s Hospital Payment & Information Management reported some of the concerns of the 11 organizations that presented testimony to the ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee on ICD-10-PCS.
At least eight of these organizations, however, gave positive support, indicating that ICD-10-PCS would be considered as that system once further study and evaluation has been completed. These comments were received from the American Health Information Management Association, the American Hospital Association, Federation of American Hospitals, American Speech-Language Hearing Association, AdvaMed, Medical Technology Partners, Ingenix Syndicated Content Group, and the Princeton Provider Group.
AdvaMed (the Advanced Medical Technology Association) in Washington, DC, even said it supported the "rapid" adoption of the system. The only organization that did not support the adoption of ICD-10-PCS as the national standard for inpatient procedure coding was the American Medical Association.
Implementation date remains uncertain
While the comments on the standard itself were very positive, several of the commenters questioned its implementation date. The Federal Register stated that implementation could not occur before October 2003. The providers who testified before the committee wanted ICD-10-CM diagnoses implemented at the same time as ICD-10-PCS procedures. The committee, however, responded that linking the ICD-10-PCS implementation date to ICD-10-CM or the selection of a uniform procedure coding system could postpone the implementation of ICD-10-PCS well beyond 2003.
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