When I  began this series,  I made two key statements:

First, that “the implementation of ICD-10 will result in an initial decrease in cash flow for even the best prepared healthcare organization,” and second, “the severity and duration of ICD-10′s negative impact will be dependent on the quality of the implementation.”

By following the steps outlined in the series’ posts you’ve gained key insights into the direct financial impact that the ICD-10 implementation will have on your revenue.

Featured posts in the series:

ICD-10 and Your Bottom Line

ICD-10 Revenue Neutrality – is Your Current Documentation Sufficient?

Will Your ICD-10 Coding Produce Revenue Neutrality?

Does the DRG Assignment of My Visits Change Under ICD-10?

Do Proposed Payer Reimbursement Rates for ICD-10 Affect Cash Flow?

Since the series started, two key industry surveys were published. The first by us, Phoenix Health Systems and another by WEDI. Both surveys illustrated that many providers have not completed an assessment of the ICD-10 impacts on their organization.  Certainly the steps presented in this series don’t make up a complete assessment of the impacts of the ICD-10 transition, but it does provide a look at the financial impacts your organization should be focused on. If you haven’t finished a complete assessment of the operational, technical, and other financial impacts that ICD-10 will have on your organization, you need to do so quickly.

By performing the systematic assessment of documentation, coding, grouping, and payment rates, suggested in our series, you have more information than many healthcare organizations regarding the direct impacts that the implementation of ICD-10 will have on your cash flow.  Perhaps more importantly than a quantitative value of the cash flow impact, you have key data to direct the next steps of your ICD-10 implementation effort.

If you follow the steps outlined in this series, you will acquire important insight about how the documentation your team produces today translates into codes, and eventually into cash flow.  You can and should use that insight to identify areas where your providers need training on how to provide the data that coders require, to quickly and accurately code charts.

If you have progressed far enough in your coder training process to have the coding assessment done by your own coders, you are even better off. Once you’ve completed a coding assessment with your own coders, you possess key data about coding accuracy, productivity, and can get helpful feedback from the coders who participated about trouble spots to direct your future training efforts

Finally, you have gained an advantage over your payers, in that you have projected ICD-10 reimbursement data based on your specific charts instead of a map derived from ICD-9 codes. This will provide useful information for fee schedule negotiations.

If your assessment of the direct impacts of ICD-10 is like that of many healthcare providers, you’ve answered some critical questions and raised others.  Subscribe to our blog to receive more information about other impacts of ICD-10,  and contact us if you need help with your next steps.