CMS sets Oct. 1, 2015 conversion date for ICD-10

The countdown has restarted toward the compliance deadline for the federally mandated conversion to the ICD-10 diagnostic and procedural codes. The new ICD-10 start date is Oct. 1, 2015, according to a terse CMS statement last week.

But many of the problems and anxieties that led to last month's congressional pushback on the ICD-10 start date are still unresolved.

Physician groups led the charge in opposition to the 2014 deadline, citing potential problems such as the inability of many vendors of electronic health-record and practice-management systems to have their ICD-10 updated systems delivered in time for physicians and their staffs to have them installed.

The American Medical Association and the Medical Group Management Association were among several physician groups that lobbied hard for a delay, and both remain leery about the ICD-10 conversion.

“The AMA has long considered ICD-10 to be an unfunded mandate that comes at a time when physicians are being asked to make a number of other significant changes to their practices,” AMA President Dr. Ardis Dee Hoven said in a statement. “While the AMA did not support the legislation that extended the ICD-10 deadline, because it failed to reform Medicare's flawed payment formula, we believe a delay would have been inevitable for a coding system that has not completed end-to-end testing. The postponement will give physicians extra time to work with vendors on necessary system updates, train their staff, and test the ICD-10 changes with payers, clearinghouses and others.”

The American Health Information Management Association, a strong advocate for ICD-10 adoption and an opponent of the delay, said in a written statement that it “applauds” the CMS' new start date.

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