The American Medical Association is taking second aim in its call to federal officials to halt the planned and federally mandated 2013 rollout of the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision family of procedural and diagnostic codes.
This time, Dr. James Madara, the AMA's executive vice president and CEO, is appealing to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a four-page letter dated Thursday.
Last week, Madara issued a similar appeal to House Speaker John Boehner.
In November, the AMA's House of Delegates called for the association “to work vigorously” to block the ICD-10 Madara's most recent missive (PDF) contained more detail, including a table of payments and penalties in the three main federal health information technology programs.
“The timing of the ICD-10 transition that is scheduled for Oct. 1, 2013 could not be worse,” Madara argued, “as many physicians are currently spending significant time and resources implementing electronic health records into their practices.
“Physicians are also facing present and future financial penalties if they do not successfully participate in multiple Medicare programs underway, including the e-prescribing program, the EHR meaningful use program, and the Physicians Quality Reporting System (PQRS) program,” Madara wrote.
“In the wake of this onslaught of overlapping regulatory mandates and reporting requirements, HHS has an opportunity to ease the burdens on physician practices by halting the implementation of ICD-10 and calling on appropriate stakeholders, including physicians, hospitals, payers to assess an appropriate replacement for ICD-9 within a reasonable time frame,” Madara said.
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