A sharply worded resolution the Texas Delegation is taking to the American Medical Association House of Delegates asks the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to immediately “stop implementation and development of all new coding and billing standards, including ICD-10 and HIPAA 5010.” The resolution, cosponsored by the North Carolina and Nebraska delegations, says CMS has not accounted for the massive disruption these standards will wreck on physicians’ practices on top of the big changes that will accompany the large-scale transitions to electronic health records and other health information technology tools. It calls on AMA to “work with other national and state medical and informatics associations to develop and evaluate the appropriate replacement” for the current ICD-9 coding system. Practices that do not implement the 5010 transaction standards by Jan. 1, 2012, will not be paid for their work. The deadline for adopting the ICD-10 coding system is Oct. 1, 2013. Read more about complying with these new regulatory burdens at the TMA Calendar of Doom. The AMA house convenes Saturday, Nov. 11, 2011, in New Orleans.
The full resolution, which the AMA house has designated Resolution 224, is reprinted below:
Subject: Coding and Billing Standards
Whereas, Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and other Health Information Technology (HIT) tools such as Health Information Exchange are being actively implemented in medical practices; and
Whereas, In the next five year EMRs and HIT likely will be required for participation in new payment organizations such as Accountable Care Organizations and may become a standard of practice; and
Whereas, Significant upgrades of EMRs and HIT will be required between 2012 and 2015 in order to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 and Stage 3 for those physicians who are eligible for EMR stimulus funds, and physicians not eligible for stimulus funds will have significant challenges implementing EMRs and HIT without financial support; and
Whereas, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has mandated that ICD-10 will be implemented in October 2013 and has not accounted for the difficulty of making this change in addition to the difficulties of EMR and HIT implementation; and
Whereas, There is significant concern that ICD-10 will cause significant financial and workflow disruptions if implemented simultaneously with new EMRs and HIT systems; and
Whereas, There is dissent in the informatics community that ICD-10 is the appropriate replacement for ICD-9 given ICD-11 is to be available in 2015; therefore be it
RESOLVED That our American Medical Association immediately petition the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to stop implementation and development of all new coding and billing standards including ICD-10 (Directive to Take Action); and be it further
2 comments:
Testimony in Ref Comm overwhelmingly supportive of Texas resolution.
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