ICD-10: Crying Wolf? The Only Thing to Lose is Income

“How huge a business risk are you willing to take? How would it affect your reputation, your operations� if come October 1, 2015, your practice or facility wasn’t ready for ICD-10 and was unable to be paid by either private or public insurers? That is the date all healthcare providers and insurers are federally mandated to switch to ICD-10.

Asking those questions was Jim Daley at a recent webinar sponsored by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, better known as WEDI. Daley is chair of WEDI, co-chair of the WEDI ICD-10 workgroup and Director of IT for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.

And he was responding to a question about dealing with professional colleagues who roll their eyes and claim that the October 1, 2015, deadline is an example of “crying wolf.� Hasn’t it been delayed at least twice? So why not delay it again?

Daley admitted that this “crying wolf� attitude is a huge challenge. WEDI and other organizations are keeping Congress apprised of the cost of further delays, he told the group. (Congress delayed this year’s deadline.) Any practice or facility who doesn’t take the deadline seriously is taking a huge financial risk, he said.