We recommend that you organize your planning into five steps for readiness.
- Initiate, plan, and communicate
• Establish an ICD-10 team with a leader empowered to move the
process along.
• Set a meeting frequency for the team—ideally, biweekly.
• Determine decision-making authority, including a reporting structure
that fits within your organization (e.g., to an IT Steering Committee or
Senior Management).
• Develop a detailed timeline, list of tasks, and anticipated effort.
• Educate leadership and key stakeholders on the impact and
importance of ICD-10. This is not a flashy project like others you may
be implementing; it will take effort to get the attention of leadership to
understand its importance.
• Communicate the transition plan—and why ICD-10 matters—to the
entire health system and outside partners/vendors/payers. - Complete discovery, inventory, assessment, and
implement change
• Gather a preliminary list of applications, systems, and databases
potentially impacted (including any quality reporting tools or legacy
databases).
• Create an ICD-10 inventory and status tracker template to organize,
track, and filter your progress towards compliance.
• Conduct discovery work sessions with all departments, vendors, and
payers to determine readiness and identify risks for non-compliance.
• Update and maintain the inventory of areas with current ICD-10
readiness, including:
• Summary plan for ICD-10 compliance
• Specific dates when ICD-10 will be ready for testing
• A roster of impacted departments and people
• Anticipated training needs
• Identified risks
• Current status
• Backup and contingency plans, especially if a vendor is not ready
by 2014
• Execute your ICD-10 plans, upgrade software systems, modify
databases, and prepare for testing and training. - Test and train
• Develop a written testing plan and testing scenarios, including:
• Software testing (unit, system, performance, etc.)
• ICD-10 Level I compliance testing (internal testing)
• ICD-10 Level II compliance testing (external testing)
• Assess training needs and create written training plan. - Transition
• Go live with ICD-10 in accordance with the compliance date.
• Operate using ICD-10 coding system for all events moving forward.
• Utilize ICD-9 coding system for all events prior to the compliance
deadline. - Monitor
Initiate your monitoring plan including monitoring for:
• Issues
• Productivity
• Accuracy
• Staffing levels and morale
• Quality
• Reimbursement
• Ongoing support needs and continued improvement
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.