The shift to the complex ICD-10 coding system has been looming over hospitals and physicians like a dark storm cloud since it was first announced. The recent Healthcare Business article titled, Looming Shift to More Complex ICD-10 Coding System Has Hospitals and Physicians Scrambling, examines the upcoming conversion to the confusing, consuming and expensive ICD-10.
Now less than a year away, the impending shift has generated not only a lot of stress and anxiety, it has also created multiple problems. Time consuming and expensive staff training will cost not-for-profit hospitals and clinics inestimable amounts of money as they struggle to teach experienced and inexperienced individuals the basics of the system before the Oct. 1, 2015 transition date.
After already being twice postponed, what has been compared to a second healthcare Y2K is unlikely to be delayed yet again, and now hospitals are expected to devote hundreds of hours and financial investments in IT resources in preparation for the shift to ICD-10 coding.
As Charlene Webber-Schuss, Chief Information Officer at Community Hospital on California’s Monterey Peninsula states, “We’re concerned about a lot of the community practices.” If the doctors’ documentation is inadequate, we (and they) will suffer lost revenue.”
The post-adoption financial consequences are another worry thousands of providers are facing. Hospital officials and physicians fear declined productivity resulting in revenue losses from bad documentation, and rejected claims because of improper coding.
But what if there was a solution that could simplify the shift to ICD-10 saving hospitals time and money? A California based smart data company, SyTrue, has created the new standard for data driven health. SyTrue‘s platform as a service (Paas), turns unstructured (and structured) information into semantically interoperable content that can be leveraged to automate ICD-10 clinical coding. SyTrue’s e-Abstraction technology is 15 times faster and more accurate than human abstraction. The technology seamlessly integrates and structures disparate information to produce a longitudinal and comprehensive view of the patient population. SyTrue’s solution not only eliminates the confusion factor but it also gives providers new insight on how to improve care and generate revenue.
Supporters of ICD-10 say the coding system will allow providers to keep track of patient care and organize data to perform quality-improvement analysis, a feat that already exists with SyTrue’s platform. SyTrue is currently helping reinvent clinical documentation as it already exists and continues to evolve, while creating new expectations around data usability and interoperability.
In comparison to Computer Assisted Coding (CAC) ICD-10 systems, the technology that SyTrue possesses extends far past the network of hospitals and physicians. This platform stands to also positively impact and aid the daily lives of clinical researchers and pharmaceutical companies by helping them mine their multi-sourced clinical data, and create records of patient populations, accessible and usable in seconds. With all this at their fingertips, physician groups stand to make money by wasting less time.
With all the chaos surrounding ICD-10 compliance we hope hospitals everywhere are able to find solutions like the one SyTrue provides to make the October 1, 2014 deadline one that will turn the costly transition into one that will generate revenue and improve care.