At almost $3 trillion, the U.S. health budget is more than the national GDP of the vast majority of the countries around the world. Inefficiencies account for hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year, and in order to overcome this problem the government has been mandating the implementation of health information technology (health IT).
Although the U.S. has one of the largest health budgets in the world, it lags behind in the implementation of technology compared to other countries. The ICD-10 is the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a classification list by the World Health Organization (WHO). Once again the U.S. is one of the last countries to adopt the standard, but the Department of Health and Human Services has a mandate for health organizations to be compliant with ICD-10 by Oct. 1, 2014.
CODESMART, a premier national subject matter expert for ICD-10 education and compliance in the United States, and Amerinet, a leading national healthcare solutions organization delivering unique solutions through performance improvement resources, guidance and ongoing support, have partnered to offer the first ICD-10 pilot program for rural healthcare facilities. The program will extend to Amerinet members exclusive best practices and a streamlined approach to ICD-10.
Rural communities have lagged behind in many different technological sectors in the United States. The logistics of implementing the required infrastructure to deliver the services is one of the biggest reasons. As broadband technology becomes available in these communities, they will be able to adopt the latest standards in communications, healthcare, safety and other services currently available in urban settings.
"Rural healthcare facilities have been largely ignored during the current ICD-10 transition and in some cases have lacked access to the expertise and resources. We want to help them and demonstrate to the industry the way to deliver streamlined best practices ICD-10 expertise through technology, on-line education, and economies of scale by pooling together a large group of rural facilities. CODESMART, in partnership with Amerinet, will be the ICD-10 champions and advocates for rural healthcare in the U.S.," said Ira Shapiro, CEO of CODESMART.
The 10th revision of ICD has more than 141,000 designations of the aspects of disease treatment and the categories of disease and treatment modalities. This is a considerable improvement from the previous ICD, which only had 17,000 codes, diagnoses and procedures. The work on this version began in 1982 and it was completed in 1992.
Implementing the standard nationwide will improve not only how diseases are classified and treated, but also streamline many of the functions that create the blot in the current healthcare infrastructure.
"The transition to ICD-10 is going to impact physicians and hospitals in many ways. Not only will there be a considerable increase in the number and specificity of codes with ICD-10, but providers may experience a detrimental impact to their revenue stream if they don't plan, train their staff and physicians, implement and monitor their processes in the migration properly," said Marshall Bushko, senior director, Information Technology Solutions, Amerinet.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
