Unintended Consequences Of ICD-10 Delay

“I find it comical that credibility and date are in the same sentence,” Sid Hebert said, “since we’re going for our fourth” ICD-10 compliance deadline. Hebert, Humana’s ICD-10 program manager, predicted that if the current delay goes out beyond one year, large payers will essentially “mothball” the project with the intention to reinstate ICD-10 work roughly 6 months ahead of whatever might be the new date.

“What will suffer is the testing,” Hebert said at WEDI’s emergency ICD-10 summit, convened in response to the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from requiring ICD-10 prior to October 2015. Pushing off testing is only one of the unintended consequences that the law triggered by delaying ICD-10. Organizations now have to reassess the project and redefine their requirements, and many will have to find resources to do that, notably financial and personnel...