The transition to new diagnosis codes that will culminate in October 2014 is predicted to be a significant burden for physician practices and possibly cause many to go out of business. At least that is what the American Medical Association and other organized medicine groups predicted in a December 20, 2012, letter.

This controversial topic was brought to our attention by AmedNews in their article, “Organized medicine urges CMS to halt ICD-10 switch.” The administrative and financial strains of switching to the new ICD-10 coding classification appears to coincide with other required projects.

The new ICD-10 system is a large project. It will have five times the number of codes to use for billing reimbursement than the current ICD-9 does. It will require planning and training.

Access Innovations’ M.A.I. machine-assisted indexing system and specialists in complex coding, tagging, and indexing can minimize the risk of coding errors with proper training and quality assurance. Many widely used tagging systems lack a user-friendly interface and may not implement a rigorous ANSI-compliant coding subsystem. Access Innovations’ solutions are ANSI-compliant and implement state-of-the-art technology to speed tagging and reduce errors.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.