Senate Passes Bill With One-Year ICD-10 Deadline Delay

The Senate voted 64-35 to pass a House-approved measure that would delay a scheduled 24% cut to Medicare physician reimbursement rates and push-back the ICD-10 compliance deadline to 2015. The bill is expected to be signed by the president this coming week.

Physicians working to transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes will deal with an increased in the total number of codes. Currently there are approximately 14,000 ICD-9 codes. With ICD-10 the total will increase to 69,000 codes. The legislation introduced by a Republican would push back the deadline to comply with ICD-10 to October 1, 2015.

The measure states, "The Secretary of Health and Human Service may not, prior to Oct. 1, 2015, adopt ICD-10 code sets as the standard for codes sets." It also cites sections in the Social Security Act and the Code of Federal Regulations, which contain the secretary's authority to mandate the new code sets. CMS estimated that the delay will cost between $1 billion and $6.6 billion.

As the leader in high performance EHR solutions, MD Logic will officially release our ICD-10 software module at our June 2014 EHR User Conference. This will give our customers more than a year to get familiar with the ICD-10 codes and prepare for the future. Our development team is committed to making the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 the easiest in the industry. Once mandated, MD Logic will continue to support both ICD-9 and ICD-10 for our customers. Our goal is simple – we create EHR solutions that allow healthcare providers to maximize efficiency, reduce overhead and boost profitability.