WEDI Releases Guide On HIPAA Transactions Requiring ICD-10 Codes

ICD-10 Impact to HIPAA Transactions

The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), the leading authority on the use of Health IT to improve the exchange of healthcare information, announced the release of a new  ICD-10 issue brief co-written with ASC X12 entitled, ICD-10 Impact to HIPAA Transactions. The issue brief was developed to help the healthcare industry better understand where to focus transaction testing to ensure that codes are correctly placed and formatted within the transactions.

The implementation of ICD-10 impacts virtually every business process and system in health plans, provider facilities, clearinghouses and vendor offerings. WEDI and ASC X12’s issue brief states that, as part of the ICD-10 testing process, it is imperative to assure that ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes are accurately passed from providers through to payers within the transactions required under HIPAA to exchange diagnosis and procedure information. The issue brief provides information on the transactions that are impacted by ICD-10 as well as the placement of the codes within the transactions. Knowing where all of the touch points are will help facilitate implementation and testing of ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS.

The ICD-10 Impact to HIPAA Transactions issue brief was written by WEDI’s ICD-10 Workgroup and ASC X12 staff members and is available for download on the WEDI website.

In other WEDI news, the organization was recently named in the CMS/ONC Principles and Strategy for Accelerating Health Information Exchange (HIE) report as one of the organizations with whom HHS plans to coordinate within the three categories for accelerating HIE – Accelerating HIE, Advancing Standards and Interoperability and Consumer/Patient Engagement.

The report is partially based on feedback collected from the Advancing Interoperability and HIE request for information (RFI) and comments derived from a comprehensive survey created and distributed by WEDI in March 2013. The WEDI survey collected feedback and additional recommendations related to consumer/patient engagement and HHS’ proposed growth strategies as a means to measure the industry’s response to the CMS/ONC RFI released earlier that month.