A bill signed into US law on April 1, 2014 prohibits the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from adopting ICD-10-CM prior to October, 2015.
We know that some Reed Group DisabilityGuidelines™ subscribers are doing a happy dance at this news. Others are grinding their teeth and adding up the accumulating costs of administrative hours wasted.
So how has the delay changed Reed Group’s ICD-10-CM plans?
It hasn’t.
We’ve been working on the coding transition in DisabilityGuidelines™ (formerly MDGuidelines and ACOEM Treatment Guidelines) for some time; we’ve planned all along to support ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM, in parallel, for the foreseeable future. We already have ICD-10-CM coding alongside ICD-9-CM coding in the disability duration topics. Scheduled improvements include updated ICD-10-CM web services, an updated ICD-10-CM FAQ, an ICD-9-CM / ICD-10-CM look-up tool, and ACOEM and state treatment guideline crosswalks updated to include
ICD-10-CM codes.
In short, Reed Group’s LeavePro® software and DisabilityGuidelines™ will both support ICD-10-CM by fall – as planned.