An American Medical Association board of trustees report that recommended against a strategy of bypassing the ICD-10 set of diagnostic and procedural codes and skipping straight to ICD-11 was rejected by the AMA House of Delegates on Wednesday morning.
A report exploring the feasibility of going straight to ICD-11 was called for at last year's annual House of Delegates meeting and was included as part of a new Stop the Implementation of ICD-10 policy.
Dr. W. Jeff Terry, a urologist from Mobile, Ala., spoke in favor of referring the report and its recommendations back to the board, and he lamented how the AMA seems to be “out of ideas” on how to stop the implementation of ICD-10, which the CMS has scheduled for Oct. 1, 2014.
“I'm afraid that ICD-10, with its one-day implementation period, will be the final nail in the coffin for small practices,” said Terry, the former president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama.
Dr. James Milam, an obstetrician and gynecologist from Vernon Hills, Ill., also called for referring the report back to the board. Milam, the former president of the Illinois State Medical Society, called for delaying ICD-10 implementation for “as long as we can.”
The report and its recommendation were referred back to the board by a voice vote.
The report was originally discussed Sunday before one of eight reference committees hearing debates over proposed reports and resolutions. The reference committee, chaired by Dr. Marta Van Beek, a dermatologist from Iowa City, Iowa, recommended that the report be accepted. It noted that this report “achieves the goal of discussing the feasibility of moving directly from ICD-9 to ICD-11,” which is what it was intended to do.
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