HIMSS: Online tool determines financial effect of ICD-10

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Wondering what effect the new coding system could have on your practice's bottom line? A professional organization introduces a handy tool for forecasting your finances.

Until now you might have guessed how the switch to the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision (ICD-10) will affect your practice’s bottom line, without having much data to support your hunches. That’s about to change.

A new online calculator allows you to see the economic hit you’ll take when the new system is enacted in 2014-and then gives you ways to prevent a financial catastrophe.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s (HIMSS) ICD-10 Financial Risk Calculator offers a risk rating for revenues, cash flow, and operational costs, and then compares your risk with that of similar practices.

The free calculator is an addition-and perhaps entryway-to the ICD-10 Playbook HIMSS released last year that offers successful transition to the new coding system.

“The calculator provides hospitals and physician practices with a way to quickly assess the financial risk that ICD-10 poses to their organizations,” says Juliet Santos, a HIMSS senior director. “By simply answering a short survey, providers receive unique insight into the potential impacts of ICD-10, steps they can take to address those impacts, and ways to augment their accounts receivable even before they complete their conversion to ICD-10.”

Physicians, administrators, or other support staff can complete the survey and have results emailed within 2 to 3 days. The small practice survey, which has 25 questions, considers a practice’s location, denial rates, Medicare dependence, daily average claim acceptance, and other data. It looks at less tangible factors as well, such as how much you know about vendor performance and how recently you’ve performed a billing audit.

Because you cannot stop and save the survey once you’ve started, HIMSS advises you to print the questions in advance and determine your responses.

The HIMSS ICD-10 Task Force, composed of technology, finance, and management experts from corporations, consultancies, and healthcare systems, teamed with healthcare compliance technology company Jvion LLC to produce the interactive tool.

Although your answers to the questions are anonymous, Jvion will be collecting the data to provide a big-picture view of the effects of ICD-10 and tailor its products toward those provider groups that are most at-risk.

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