HIMSS to CMS: Move forward with ICD-10

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the Chicago-based trade group for health information technology developers and users, has encouraged the CMS to stay the course on nationwide adoption of ICD-10.

In a four-page letter to CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and signed by HIMSS President and CEO H. Stephen Lieber and board Chairwoman Willa Fields, a professor in the school of nursing at San Diego State University, the pair urged the CMS “to give a strong message to the industry that ICD-10 has already been thoroughly vetted, will be implemented on the (Oct. 1, 2014) regulatory date, and that we must move forward with the nationwide implementation.”

“Any further slipping of this implementation data across the nation (will) result in serious disruptions in payment for all entities,” the HIMSS officials said. “Further delays in ICD-10 will only signal that CMS is not serious about administrative simplification and HIPAA requirements.”

About this time last year, when the ICD-10 deadline was still Oct. 1, 2013, a compliance date first set in 2009, Tavenner, backed up by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announced they would delay compliance. Last April, they set a new date, Oct. 1, 2014, which was supported by the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and others, and where it stands today.

But not all agree.

The American Medical Association and other state physician medical societies have come out against the planned ICD-10 rollout as scheduled, favoring instead a further delay to explore alternatives to the now 23-year-old standard, including waiting for the release of ICD-11, which is due in 2015.