Community Hospital Worries: ICD-10 And MU
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
ICD-10 and Meaningful Use top the list of concerns revealed in a recent poll of community hospital administrators.
Government mandates such as ICD-10 and Meaningful Use are a top concern of community hospital providers, according to a recent poll conducted by the American College of Healthcare Executives.
According to the report, ACHE asked respondents to rank 10 issues affecting their hospitals in order of importance and to identify specific areas of concern within each of those issues. They ranked these issues in the following order:
- financial challenges
- healthcare reform implementation
- governmental mandates
- patient safety and quality
- care for the uninsured/underinsured
- patient satisfaction
- physician-hospital relations
- population health management
- technology
- personnel shortages
iHealth Beat reports 68 percent of CEOs who participated in the survey said they were concerned about implementing the ICD-10 coding system.
Modern Healthcare adds that 69 percent of the respondents said adequate and timely Medicare reimbursement was a major concern. Sixty-seven percent reported they were worried about bad debt while 63 percent said they were struggling with decreases in patient volumes.
In reference to patient safety and care priorities, 73 percent the engagement of physicians in improving the culture, 61 percent said redesigning care processes, and 56 percent cited the shift from fee-for-service to value-payment structures.
“The survey results show that these are challenging times for CEOs and leadership teams, and we are all expected to do more with less,” says Deborah J. Bowen, FACHE, CAE, president and CEO of ACHE. “Taking care of patients and improving patient safety and quality in their organizations is job No. 1, but CEOs acknowledge they must do so in a climate of complex payment reform, dwindling reimbursement and government mandates.”