WEDI Issues New Resources to Assist with ICD-10 Transition
The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), the country’s leading authority on the use of IT in healthcare to improve health information exchange, has developed two new resources to assist organizations implementing the new ICD-10 codes required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The new resources, ICD-10 State Workers’ Compensation Readiness List and the List of State Medicaid Sites with ICD-10 Information, have been developed with the aim of “Ensuring that all entities are adopting and or are aligning with ICD-10”. The resources will “help further [the health] industry’s movement towards streamlining and automating end-to-end workflow processes.”
The new ICD-10 codes must be adopted by HIPAA-covered entities under federal law, but the new codes do not need to be adopted by the workers’ compensation industry. The industry is now becoming more aligned with HIPAA Transaction and Code Set rules, but rather than being covered by a national mandate, the industry is instead subject to state laws.
A number of states will be adopting ICD-10 codes, so it is therefore essential that payers, providers, and vendors are aware of new state requirements so they can take the appropriate action ahead of the October 1, deadline for using the new codes. States that do not adopt ICD-10 must run dual processing systems to accommodate the new codes.
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WEDI has written to all state governors requesting information on the status of their state with regard to the move to ICD-10 and has sought confirmation whether they intend to adopt the new codes. As new information is received, the Workers’ Compensation Readiness List will be updated. WEDI will issue alerts when new information is added. Individuals can sign up to receive these alerts via the WEDI website.
According to Sherry Wilson, co-chair of the WEDI Property and Casualty Sub-workgroup, “It is critical that industry stakeholders are aware of the status of states’ ICD-10 readiness in order to implement the appropriate action plan to comply with both state and federal regulations come October 1, 2015, regardless of whether organizations are HIPAA covered entities.”
Jim Daley, co-chair of WEDI’s ICD-10 Committee and director of IT for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, recently said the ICD-10 State Workers’ Compensation Readiness List is “A great resource to see the status of where your state is in terms of ICD-10 adoption for workers’ comp.” The list details the states that will be adopting the new ICD-10 codes, and which ones will not.
The List of State Medicaid Sites with ICD-10 Information is intended to serve as a reference document for HIPAA-covered entities to use during the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes.
