• Government
• Profession
• Business
• Opinion
• Health

• Health reform
• H1N1
• P4P
• EMRs
• Medicare
• Liability
• AMA House
• » More

• Book Excerpt
• Business Pitch
• Meetings
• » More

• Contract Language
• Ethics Forum
• In the Courts
• Practice Management
• Technically Speaking
• » More

• Issue dates
• Regions
• Health plans
• Sections
• News briefs
• Columns
• Editorials
• Letters
• Writers
• Other years

• Search tips
• E-mail alert
• Radio
• RSS
• Mobile
• Subscribe
• Institutions
• Staff directory
• Advertising
• Permissions
• Reprints
• News media
• Site guide
• Useful links
• About
• Premium
• Contact

Physicians push to delay move to new ICD code set

The transition to the ICD-10 system would increase the number of possible codes from roughly 24,000 to more than 200,000.

By David Glendinning, amednews staff. July 10, 2006.

• PRINT|
• E-MAIL|
• RESPOND|
• REPRINTS|
• SHARE

Washington -- Three years is not nearly enough time to move physicians to a new diagnostic coding system, the American Medical Association and several other groups say.

Health information technology legislation that the House started considering last month would require hospitals and physician offices to upgrade from the ICD-9 coding system to ICD-10 by October 2009. Using a much richer set of codes corresponding to patient conditions, health care professionals could more accurately diagnose medical problems and pass the information along to both public and private payers, supporters of the bill said.

Hospitals use ICD codes to record both the diagnosis of a patient and any medical procedures that he or she receives. Physician offices use the ICD system for the diagnosis phase but employ CPT codes to identify any procedures that they provide.

The timeline established by one version of the Health Information Technology Promotion Act of 2005 and backed by hospitals and device manufacturers is much too ambitious, according to physicians, health plans and practice managers. A coalition of these groups is calling for Congress to push back implementation from 2009 to 2012 to give doctors more time to get up to speed on the new system.

"In terms of health care transitions, this is incredibly fast, and it's just not doable," said Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor for the Medical Group Management Assn. "There are so many things that have to happen -- software upgrades, clinical and administrative staff training, crosswalks from the old code set to the new."