Deadline for ICD-10 and FFS Testing Opportunities

The MLN Connects™ Provider eNews contains important news, announcements, and updates for health care professionals. Friday August 1, 2014 Deadline for ICD-10 Allows Health Care Industry Ample Time to Prepare for ChangeDeadline set for October 1, 2015 On July 31, HHS issued a rule finalizing October 1, 2015 as the new compliance date for health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses to transition to ICD-10. This deadline allows providers, insurance companies, and others in the health care industry time to ramp up their operations to ensure their systems and business processes are ready to go on October 1, 2015. The ICD-10 codes on a claim are used to classify diagnoses and procedures on claims submitted to Medicare and private insurance payers. By enabling more detailed patient history coding, ICD-10 can help to better coordinate a patient’s care across providers and over time. ICD-10 improves quality measurement and reporting, facilitates the detection and prevention of fraud, waste, and abuse, and leads to greater accuracy of reimbursement for medical services. The code set’s granularity will improve data capture and analytics of public health surveillance and reporting, national quality reporting, research and data analysis, and provide detailed data to enhance health care delivery. Health care providers and specialty groups in the United States provided extensive input into the development of ICD-10, which includes more detailed codes for the conditions they treat and reflects advances in medicine and medical technology. "ICD-10 codes will provide better support for patient care, and improve disease management, quality measurement, and analytics,” said Marilyn Tavenner, Administrator of CMS. “For patients under the care of multiple providers, ICD-10 can help promote care coordination.” Using ICD-10, doctors can capture much more information, meaning they can better understand important details about the patient’s health than with ICD-9-CM. Moreover, the level of detail that is provided for by ICD-10 means researchers and public health officials can better track diseases and health outcomes. ICD-10 reflects improved diagnosis of chronic illness and identifies underlying causes, complications of disease, and conditions that contribute to the complexity of a disease. Additionally, ICD-10 captures the severity and stage of diseases such as chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and asthma. The previous revision, ICD-9-CM, contains outdated, obsolete terms that are inconsistent with current medical practice, new technology, and preventive services. ICD-10 represents a significant change that impacts the entire health care community. As such, much of the industry has already invested resources toward the implementation of ICD-10. CMS has implemented a comprehensive testing approach, including end-to-end testing in 2015, to help ensure providers are ready. While many providers, including physicians, hospitals, and health plans, have completed the necessary system changes to transition to ICD-10, the time offered by Congress and this rule ensure all providers are ready. For additional information about ICD-10, please visit the ICD-10 website. ICD-10 Testing Opportunities for Medicare FFS Providers On July 31, HHS issued a rule (CMS-0043-F) finalizing October 1, 2015 as the new compliance date for health care providers and health plans to transition to ICD-10. ICD-10 represents a significant code set change that impacts the entire health care community. CMS is taking a comprehensive four-pronged approach to preparedness and testing for ICD-10 to ensure that CMS, as well as the Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) provider community, is ready: CMS internal testing of its claims processing systems CMS Beta testing tools available for download Acknowledgement testing End-to-end testing For more information, see MLN Matters® Special Edition Article #SE1409, “Medicare FFS ICD-10 Testing Approach.” Acknowledgement Testing This past March, CMS conducted a successful ICD-10 acknowledgement testing week. Providers, suppliers, billing companies, and clearinghouses are welcome to submit acknowledgement test claims anytime up to theOctober 1, 2015 implementation date. In addition, special acknowledgement testing weeks in November, March, and June of 2015 will give submitters access to real-time help desk support and allows CMS to analyze testing data. Registration is not required for these virtual events. Contact your Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) for more information about acknowledgment testing. End-to-End Testing CMS plans to offer providers and other Medicare submitters the opportunity to participate in end-to-end testing with MACs and the Common Electronic Data Interchange (CEDI) contractor in January, April, and July of 2015. As planned, approximately 2,550 volunteer submitters will have the opportunity to participate over the course of three testing periods. The goals of this testing are to demonstrate that: Providers and submitters are able to successfully submit claims containing ICD-10 codes to the Medicare FFS claims systems CMS software changes made to support ICD-10 result in appropriately adjudicated claims Accurate Remittance Advices are produced Additional details about end-to-end testing will be available soon. Check the ICD-10 Medicare FFS Provider Resources web page for the latest information and educational resources to implement and transition to ICD-10 medical coding. Please share this important information with your colleagues and encourage them to subscribe to the eNews.  Previous issues are available in the archive.