Providers Not Alone With Strong ICD-10 Opinions
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Survey shows healthcare claims executives may be underestimating ICD-10, Affordable Care Act
Providers have been slow to embrace ICD-10, and an Enkata survey reveals they are not the only group of healthcare professionals with strong opinions about the impending code adoption. Approximately 200 healthcare insurance executives told Enkata they “are less concerned of the pending policy and compliance changes stemming from the Affordable Care Act and ICD-10 than they are about day-to-day operation metrics.”
The survey indicates insurance executive feel the real impact of ICD-10 will be “daily, run rate concerns such as meeting service level agreements and reducing claims overpayments and underpayments. Additionally, when asked how they were preparing for the change to the new ICD-10 code, an overwhelming 77 percent of respondents reported they would weather the changes by upgrading technology, with only 5 percent indicating they would hire new processors (personnel).”
Dan Enthoven, chief marketing officer, Enkata said, “With all of the hype surrounding the impending ICD-10 code adoption and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, we were surprised that the survey results suggested that healthcare claims teams were not very concerned about the potential impact of these policies, specifically on their ability to quickly and accurately process claims. These changes promise to deliver a substantial impact on the volume and complexity of claims, and managers need to be ready to respond with the same level of accuracy and efficiency that their customers expect.”
EHRIntelligence writes of the survey’s findings, “When it comes to pain points, half of respondents identified high variation in staff’s processing ability as the biggest challenge, followed closely by compliance with processes (45 percent). Rounding out the top-three biggest headaches were the challenges presented by budget constraints, reported by 41 percent of respondents. This was in sharp contrast to the challenge of managing remote personnel, which only 13 percent of those surveyed stated to be a headache.”
The survey also found that providers were in agreement when it came to the volume of claims they expected in future, Insurance & Technology reported. “Claims volumes are expected to rise in the next two years (and) about 68 percent of respondents have reported that the approximate cost of manually adjudicating a claim is $5 or more.”