Resources for the ICD-10 Transition

As a healthcare billing and receivables management software company, Quadax will be impacted by the change to ICD-10 from many angles. Multiple projects are underway to prepare our software applications for ICD-10 and manage the needs of our clients as well as the industry requirements.

All of our A/R and EDI applications have defined plans for storing ICD-10 codes in our databases. Systems designs have been created to map the flow of the new code set through the entire billing process. The current status is a “work in progress” and will continue to be throughout 2013 and well into 2014, before the October 1, 2014, deadline. At this point, there are many projects in various stages of the development life cycle from the design phase to project specifications, software development, and even implementation.

Some items you may see in the not-too-distant future are:

• The addition of an indicator on the EDI Payer List, identifying payers who are ready to begin accepting ICD-10 codes, similar to what we did for the ANSI 5010 transition and NPI. Some payers may allow ICD-10 codes prior to the deadline and others may not be able to comply in time. Our EDI Services staff will maintain the indicator to track the payer status and control which diagnosis code set should be passed on claims by payers.
• Incorporating the industry Crosswalk tool into our applications, providing quick access in Xpeditor, HARP, and PAS to look up corresponding ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes.
• Account teams reaching out to A/R Services clients with a questionnaire to gauge their ICD-10 implementation status. It is very important that our clients work closely to plan for and test interface files containing any new code sets with Quadax. This early dialog should prevent last minute scrambles and delays.

Some resources are available to our clients and staff to monitor the progress toward implementation both at the industry level and at Quadax. For EDI clients, an ICD-10 News page is available from the Documentation menu in the Portal. The page has brief summaries of ICD-10 news from industry sources and links to further information. It will include news about changes to Xpeditor and other EDI applications once they are implemented.

For A/R clients, information on how we are preparing our HARP and PAS applications to accept and transmit ICD-10 codes can be found on new ICD-10 Web pages developed for this purpose. The A/R ICD-10 site provides easy access to Quadax newsletters and bulletins on the ICD-10 transition, and software changes will be noted on these pages as well as in the release notes. A link to these pages is under “Getting Ready for...” on the main Portal page. The main Portal page also includes a link to the EDI ICD-10 page so A/R clients can monitor industry news.