Anesthesia Management: Doc: ICD-10 delays teach medical professionals to embrace apathy

After so many delays to ICD-10, practices have been left in limbo, waiting for the new compliance deadline–Oct. 1, 2015.

James Libecco, a single practitioner at Akron Skin Center in Ohio, said the most recent delay has forced his small practice to waste time, effort and money. It has been ready to go with ICD-10 for a couple years, and the delay is now rewarding “those who dragged their feet and complained rather than getting ready for ICD-10,” he said in an interview with EHR Intelligence.

“With the rest of the world being on ICD-10, I feel like we’re going to have ICD-11 before we ever get to ICD-10 at the rate we’re going right now,” he said.

The costs of ICD-10 implementation will also be more than previously thought, according to research published in February by the American Medical Association. The study predicted that small practice costs will range anywhere from $56,639 to more than $226,000.

With about year still to go before the compliance date, Libecco said his practice is just working on staying active with the program as well as working with dual-coding.

He also said all the delays are teaching those in medicine to embrace apathy.
“Just ignore it and if it ever happens, then great you’ll move on,” Libecco said. “It goes to penalize those who made the effort to get ready last time. That is not the right approach.”

While Libecco’s practice may be ready to go with the new system, many struggles remain for others, particularly for those at smaller practices.
The newest delay has hampered provider progress in the transition, according to survey results released in September by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange. Smaller providers, in particular, indicate that they have struggled since the delay, with most unsure of when they’ll complete their impact assessments, according to WEDI.