Do You Know How ICD-10 Will Affect Reimbursements?

An educational session at HIMSS13 in New Orleans will focus on use of data analytics to predict the impact that ICD-10 will have on hospital reimbursements.


An educational session at HIMSS13 in New Orleans will focus on use of data analytics to predict the impact that ICD-10 will have on hospital reimbursements.

The session presenters have considerable skin in the game--one represents a vendor that has developed analytics software, and the other represents a marketing partner. But they promise a session free of pitches.

What they want to emphasize is that analyzing reimbursement impacts can really get the attention of the C-level, particularly the CFO. “You cannot continue to do business the way you do now; each organization will get hit, depending on their case mix,” warns Maria Bounos, R.N., business development manager in the regulatory and reimbursement solutions unit of Wolters Kluwer, which will market the software of New Health Analytics in Richmond, Va.

There continues to be a mindset in the industry that the ICD-10 compliance date will be further delayed, so some have no sense of urgency and that can include the C-level, Bounos adds. Analyzing the reimbursement impact will get the financial people in your organization on your side and free up more resources for ICD-10 work, she advises.

Louis Rossiter, Ph.D., director of scientific methods at New Health Analytics, also will present at the session. His concern is that too much emphasis on ICD-10 is focused on coding, and while that is important there is risk everywhere as organizations make the transition. “Most coders are not thinking like a CFO. We want to focus attention on how this isn’t a coder’s problem.”

Education session 173, “Predicting Payment Impact of the ICD-10 Transition on Hospital Reimbursement,” is scheduled on March 7 at 10 a.m.