Update on ICD-10 delay

A previous post noted that the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, which was enacted on April 1, 2014, said that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) may not adopt ICD-10 before Oct. 1, 2015. The law, however, did not limit when the Secretary could adopt ICD-10 beyond that date.

Accordingly, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced last week that the Secretary of HHS expects to release an interim final rule in the near future that will include a new compliance date that would require the use of ICD-10 beginning Oct. 1, 2015. The rule will also require Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act covered entities to continue to use ICD-9 through Sept. 30, 2015.

CMS also announced that it has canceled the ICD-10 end-to-end testing that it otherwise planned to conduct during the week of July 21. CMS canceled the July testing due to the ICD-10 implementation delay and said additional opportunities for end-to-end testing will be available in 2015.

Meanwhile, the acknowledgment testing that occurred in March was apparently a success. CMS previously reported that from March 3 to March 7 they received approximately 127,000 ICD-10 acknowledgment test claims, representing about 5 percent of those who submit claims to Medicare. CMS and its contractors encountered no systems problems associated with those test claims. CMS had originally planned to offer another week of acknowledgment testing this month; there is no word yet on whether it will still do so or postpone that to 2015 as well.

– Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians