Health Language Unveils Latest Release Of LEAP I-10 At AHIP's Institute 2011 Conference
Payers can leverage the solution's context-specific business analysis tools to ensure clinical accuracy and achieve payment neutrality.
Health Language, Inc. (HLI), the global leader in medical and administrative terminology management, will demonstrate its upgraded version of LEAP I-10 (Language Engine Access Portal I-10) in Booth #335 at America's Health Insurance Plans Institute (AHIP) 2011 Conference being held June 15-17 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco. The user-friendly, affordable solution includes several enhancements that further ease the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10.
LEAP I-10 allows payers - and hospitals and physician practices - to simulate the financial, technology and operational impact of the ICD-10 conversion using organization-specific "what if" scenarios. The solution maps actual claims from individual benefit plans, medical policies and provider contracts from ICD-9 to ICD-10 using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid's (CMS's) General Equivalency Maps (GEMs) or any other custom-created maps.
These unique, customized, quick-turnaround simulations generate actionable intelligence and allow payers to mitigate risk by preemptively making well-informed, strategic business decisions. Armed with this data, custom maps that accurately link ICD-9 diagnosis and procedure codes (CM/PCS) to ICD-10 CM/PCS can be easily developed and tested to evaluate payment neutrality and address any additional areas of risk exposure.
LEAP I-10 allows payers to maintain business continuity and safeguard IT investments throughout the ICD-10 migration by supporting dual processing. Payers can leverage LEAP I-10 simulations to create optimal reverse ICD-10-CM/PCS to ICD-9 mappings as well. These crosswalks allow payers to continue using legacy systems that conversion steering committees deemed too costly, or too time consuming, to convert to ICD-10.
Since ICD-10 CM/PCS has almost 10 times the number of diagnosis and procedure codes as ICD-9 CM/PCS (16,000 codes will be converted to 154,000 codes), there are numerous instances of one-to-many mapping. For example, angioplasty has one ICD-9 code, but 85 ICD-10 codes. There isn't a one-size-fits-all GEMs crosswalk for payers because the appropriate mapping will be determined based on the specific provider contract, medical policy, and patient demographic.
With larger health insurers operating up to 300 internal systems that need to be migrated to ICD-10, the likelihood of implementing less than optimal mappings is extremely high. Unsuitable ICD-9 to ICD-10 or ICD-10 to ICD-9 crosswalks could result in a loss of millions of dollars for payers and jeopardize their survival in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
"The transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will affect virtually every aspect of an insurer's business and many payers are just beginning to realize the mammoth scope and difficulty of the challenge," said George Schwend, HLI's CEO and president. "Exacerbating the problem, the impact of ICD-10 will vary from plan to plan. Therefore, insurers need in-depth information about the contextual use of ICD-9 codes throughout their enterprise before selecting appropriate ICD-10 codes for each instance.
Schwend added, "The complexity and challenges of the coming transition cannot be overstated. We are very pleased to offer health plan decision-makers an invaluable operational, risk management and strategic planning tool that will assist their organization in processing claims, monitoring the bottom line and budgeting capital investments over the next 27 months."
LEAP I-10 is powered by HLI's Language Engine, the company's proven, flagship product that has been in production for over a decade. The cloud-based platform provides enterprise terminology management services such as standard and custom mapping, modeling, analysis and local content management for more than 100 terminologies including ICD-9, ICD-10 and GEMs.
About Health Language Inc.
Denver-based Health Language, Inc. (HLI) develops and delivers state-of-the-art software solutions that automatically incorporate medical vocabulary and coding standards into healthcare information technology (HCIT) applications. HLI's Language Engine (LE) allows centralized access to medical terminology standards and generates mappings to create a common pool of standardized codes and concepts that enhance patient safety, facilitate clinical outcomes analysis and accelerate reimbursement. It also provides standards for modeling, storing, updating and distributing information consistently for interoperability between hospitals, regions and countries. For more information, visit www.healthlanguage.com.
SOURCE: Health Language Inc.