The ICD-10 compliance deadline of October 1, 2015, is less than a year away, and it is crucial that your team is fully ready for the switch. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decided to extend this deadline due to the complexity of the process of getting your entire healthcare facility ready to make this change. ADSC cares about the readiness of you and your colleagues. As a result, we want to help you prepare for this large scale transition by providing you with these 3 resources we have put together.

The following article is an excerpt from Healthcare IT News. It was written by Barbara Allen. There’s no question the transition to ICD-10 will bring with it a significant loss in coder productivity. If left unaddressed, this loss of productivity will cause hospitals to get bills out more slowly. And if addressed incompletely, it will cause hospitals to incur excessive expense in increased coder headcount. Fortunately, there is still time to greatly narrow the productivity gap to protect revenue and to minimize the need to add coding resources that are increasingly difficult to secure. The key is to move quickly and with precision in addressing the root causes of productivity loss.

Prudent owners and managers in charge of the daily operations at medical practices make it their business to stay on top of changes in industry and governmental requirements regarding health care, such as the upcoming required shift from the International Classification of Diseases code version 9 to ICD-10. The United States government has announced that we must make the transition to ICD-10 by October 1, 2015. This is an extension to the due date, as we were formerly required to make the change in 2014. Many medical organizations had informed the government that they were simply not going to make the transition in time.

The team at Advanced Data Systems Corporation is relentlessly focused on helping our customers work more efficiently and improve operations overall at their medical practices. To that end, we want to showcase four ADSC tools that your business simply can’t live without. 1. FlowText In the interest of saving your staffers time and effort, we want you to know about Medics FlowText. Your physicians can use FlowText to generate letters or other documents such as reports with either voice recognition (powered by Dragon Medical transcription) or handwriting recognition. The information will automatically populate into the correct fields in the patient’s electronic health record.

How productive is your medical staff? Rather than being complacent about worker efficiency, it’s a good idea to encourage weekly habits in your staff to help them become more productive. It will make things easier for your patients and can help increase profits at the same time. 1. Continuing Education Learning is never finished, and this is especially true for such an important profession as medicine. You will want to encourage (or even mandate, depending on your particular organization’s circumstances) your medical staff to stay on top of developments in your field.

The following article is an excerpt from ICD-10 Monitor. It was written by Sherry Wilson and Tina Greene, co-chairs of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Property & Casualty Subworkgroup. Even Captain Obvious knows that you need to “book reservations” early for external ICD-10 testing. A successful organizational transition to ICD-10 by the compliance date of Oct. 1, 2015 will require good planning. Preparation is crucial to allow your organization to leverage its ICD-10 investments to meet compliance requirements and achieve a strategic testing advantage. It is highly likely that those stakeholders who do not engage in early external ICD-10 testing, including payers as well as other trading partners, will be faced with a last-minute rush of requests to test from multiple stakeholders.

Any healthcare entity mandated to comply with HIPAA regulations have to be ready to use the ICD-10 coding system on October 1, 2015. While hospitals and corporate-run practices are likely to have few issues making the transition because they have the budget and the people to dedicate to devising and implementing a transition plan, small clinics, group practices, and solo practitioners face challenges with the switch to ICD-10.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Carl Natale. This article originally appeared on Government Health IT. Next week marks another ICD-10 milestone: One year left to go. For those of you just deciding to take it seriously now, start with education. Educate Thyself You can start with some free resources to help you understand what the ICD-10 transition means for your medical practice.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Craig Greenberg, Practice Director for Strategic Services at Consultancy Beacon Partners. This article originally appeared on Health Data Management. "The fall is fast approaching and with that brings the reminder that the new ICD-10 compliance deadline of October 1, 2015 is a little over a year away. Before the delay, healthcare organizations were working diligently on their transition plans and many were making progress on addressing key implementation challenges.

Whether you like it or not, your medical organization is going to have to make the switch from the International Classification of Diseases version 9 to ICD-10. Some healthcare providers may have grown complacent because they have seen the U.S. government declaring that the deadline for the switch would be a few years ago, only to see an extension until 2014. The latest deadline is October 1, 2015, and we should work under the assumption that this will be the last extension from the government. As a prudent leader in your healthcare group, you’re not likely going to want to delay any further in getting your team ready for the impending transition. With that in mind, here are some tips to help you move beyond ICD-9.