ICD-10 And Meaningful Use Dominate AHIMA 2011
By Ken Congdon, editor in chief, Health IT Outcomes
Last week marked the 83rd annual American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) convention. This year’s event was held in Salt Lake City, and attendance seemed a bit lighter this year than in years’ past — perhaps the result of fiscal cautiousness given our struggling economy. However, one contingent of the AHIMA membership community was at the conference in full force — coders. This attendance, no doubt, was heavily influenced by the upcoming transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets scheduled to take place in October 2013. ICD-10 will increase the sheer number of codes by nearly five times — from 14,000 to almost 70,000 — and changes the format of codes overall. For example, an ICD-9 code could only be up to five characters in length, where an ICD-10 code can be up to 7 characters long. These changes require upgrades to coding software and supporting backend systems, as well as significant change management on the part of the coding community. As expected, a number of ICD-10 solutions and services were on display in the AHIMA 2011 Exhibit Hall geared toward helping healthcare facilities meet these new coding requirements.
For example, during the conference, 3M Health Information Systems announced a new release of its industry-leading 3M Coding and Reimbursement System. The new release features an ICD-10 readiness tool that provides complete ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS coding content. Likewise, QuadraMed was demonstrating the capabilities of the new version of its Quantim Facility Coding software — a solution that the company touts was the first to support both ICD-9 and ICD-10 code sets when it was released back in late August.
Other solutions on display at AHIMA were geared toward meeting not only ICD-10, but Meaningful Use requirements as well. For example, Nuance announced new Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) solutions that use speech recognition and natural language processing (NLP) technologies to “understand” what a clinician says and extract keywords and phrases to populate ICD-10 code sets or fulfill key Meaningful Use criteria in an EHR. MedQuist, with the help of its recent acquisition of M*Modal, demonstrated similar NLP solutions at its booth as well.
Document management was also a big focus of AHIMA 2011, as several vendors, including ibml, Perceptive Software, FormFast, Hyland Software, and Cintas, illustrated the importance of digitizing paper throughout a healthcare facility. Documents related to the patient record were not the only focus here. These vendors also highlighted how digitizing documents involved in registration and the revenue cycle can streamline processes and make a significant impact in a healthcare facility’s bottom line.
HIM Jobs Must Evolve
Hardware and software vendors weren’t the only organizations with big announcements to make at AHIMA 2011. The Association itself held a significant press conference on the second da y of the event announcing its "HIM Jobs For America" initiative. This effort is geared to support American employment in the area of HIM, train existing HIM professionals on how to function in an EHR-driven healthcare system, and improve the quality of healthcare in underserved communities throughout the United States. AHIMA embarks on this initiative with the support of the Department of Health and Human Services and NorthShore Medical Labs, Inc. As part of this program, AHIMA will provide free health IT training to providers and staff in underserved communities and North Shore will donate electronic health record (EHR) software and services through Nortec Software, Inc. Furthermore, AHIMA's "HIM Jobs for America" Workforce Initiative includes a legislative platform that addresses effective job creation in the health information management profession. This legislation includes HIM competency exams and other educational programs as well as tax-credit incentives for the training and ongoing education of HIM professionals.