5 pieces of advice for adjusting to ICD-10 — You’ll need to think about how your practice management system works with your EHR.
By Aine Cryts
Ron Sterling, president of Silver Spring, Md.-based Sterling Solutions, has five pieces of advice for physician practices that want to thrive with their EHR in the ICD-10 world.
- Ensure staff are trained to make ICD-10 changes You’ll need to think about how your practice management system works with your EHR. You’ll need to think about claim edits based on the ICD-9 world, and how you work with your clearinghouse.
- Work closely with your EHR vendor Pay attention to any software updates to your EHR after Oct. 1, and make sure you apply any ICD-10-specific fixes to your EHR as soon as possible.
- Setting up treatment plans within the EHR You’ll need to provide more granularity for those areas, said Sterling. What will help with that is creating more specific treatment plans within the EHR.
- Working with other providers Practices should plan ahead with other providers in terms of their plans as of Oct. 1. All of the prescriptions, referrals, and surgery dates set before Oct. 1 will need to be converted to ICD-10.
- Recoding claims for ICD-10 Payers will vary on how strictly they manage claims after Oct. 1. From an operational perspective, it’s good to keep in mind that anything in process on Sept. 30 could require recoding to ICD-10.
