As Jerri Cowper, a physician and the Ambulatory National Practice Director for the Innovative Consulting Group, writes on EHR Intelligence, the healthcare industry has become something of a frenzied mess lately. EHR compliance initiatives like Meaningful Use and ICD-10 have become an oftentimes confusing entanglement of dates, delays, software and codes. Even though these upgrades are meant to benefit physicians and their practices, it's the physicians who are being effectively "left in the dust" to constantly play catch up on figuring out what exactly they need, how to implement it and what advantages are supposed to be gained from these new programs.

To that end, Cowper has compiled a few handy tips — tailored for physicians — to not only understand the benefits of chiropractic EHR software, but also how to best optimize these digital recordkeeping practices so that they work for, and not against, clinics and hospitals:

• Reevaluate your office's hardware: The best chiropractic EHR software is only as good as the hardware it runs on. While some practices may choose to hang onto computers and other medical equipment well past their shelf life in an effort to save money, outdated hardware — and the inefficiency that leads to for software and, consequently, patient care records — can prove more costly than the price tag of any new machine.
• Take a second look at your exam room: Cowper notes that many physicians typically don't give the layout of their examination room any second thought. "Unfortunately how the examination room is set up and where physicians access their electronic devices in relation to their patients can affect the quality of their visit," writes Cowper. "The inability to have that connection with patients can ultimately result in non-compliance as well as cause a bottleneck in the physician's documentation of the visit."

Adopting the most up-to-date chiropractic EHR software package as part of your clinic's recordkeeping can facilitate improved diagnoses, reduced costs and overall better patient care experiences.

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How well clinics, hospitals and other medical providers adopt EHR and Meaningful Use reporting into their recordkeeping may be the subject of new audit reviews conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), beginning as early as next year.

EHR Intelligence reports that the OIG is looking into the possibility of auditing providers based on how well they comply with EHR requirements, such as filing for reimbursement claims from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), or assessing the cyber security around a given provider's EHR software package.

"OIG's future planning efforts may consider the significant challenges that exist with respect to overseeing expenditures for health IT, the interoperability and effective sharing and use of health care data for medical care, and emergency preparedness and response," writes the OIG in an official agency statement. "We will perform audits of various covered entities receiving EHR incentive payments from CMS and their business associates, such as EHR cloud service providers, to determine whether they adequately protect electronic health information created or maintained by certified EHR technology." 

According to the OIG's work plan, the goal of these audits would be to ensure that — as EHR and Meaningful Use reporting becomes an increasingly integral (and mandatory component) for medical recordkeeping — providers are adequately complying with "regulatory requirements and contractual agreements." 

Implementing new EHR chiropractic software into a clinic or practice's administrative duties can not only ensure that physicians are complying with these industry regulations, but are also providing more readily accessible healthcare data, improved diagnoses for patients and even reduced costs.

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Between ICD-10 and Meaningful Use Stage 2, chiropractic practices across the country are increasingly ramping up efforts to incorporate chiropractic EHR packages into their administrative duties. Relying on more digital recordkeeping boasts a number of benefits for clinics and physicians, from facilitating more accurate diagnoses to more effectively tracking and sharing patient data and even reducing patient care costs. But could adopting chiropractic EHR software help protect your office from an audit too?

"Increasingly, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is conducting audits of practices who have attested to meaningful use of an EHR system and received incentive payments from the federal government," writes Dava Stewart of Chiropractic Economics. "Generally, such an audit will begin with a letter from the OIG requesting meaningful use documentation."

According to Stewart, this documentation includes:

• Amount of time that practitioners spend in other offices
• Chiropractic documentation software invoices and licensing agreements that prove legal purchase
• Number of facilities and EHR systems being used
• Percentage of records that are stored independently of the EHR system

In the event of an audit, all of these are documents are easier to recall if they're stored on a digital EHR system rather than strewn about in folders and filing cabinets across the office! As Stewart notes, the best way to prepare for an audit is to expect one is coming no matter what — that way, in the event that it does occur, your practice is more than ready to accommodate documentation requests.

With the best chiropractic EHR software on hand, physicians' offices can streamline their recordkeeping responsibilities, ensuring both improved care for patients and easier maneuvering around audits.

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With now under a year to go until ICD-10 implementation becomes standard, clinics and practices throughout the United States are taking significant steps to ensure their chiropractic EHR software is completely up-to-date to accommodate the thousands of new diagnostic codes that will be at their disposal. Making this transition as smoothly as possible was one of the chief topics addressed at the 2014 American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Convention in San Diego two weeks ago, with many industry experts and spokespeople doling out some of the best ways to prepare for ICD-10 by next October 1.

Here are just a few of the key takeaways from that conference, courtesy of EHR Intelligence:

• Creative, but quick, education is key: No one is going to get a handle on ICD-10 overnight, so it's crucial that these next 12 months are used as much as possible in educating clinic staffers on how to best take advantage of ICD-10 codes. Thorough ICD-10 education is a significant time investment and commitment, but a necessary one, as the better equipped practices are to handle the new coding upgrade, the better they can reap its advantages. Taking creative approaches to this kind of training is encouraged, but it's even more important to start it right away — the earlier you can begin, the better prepared providers will be.
• The importance of clean data: "The data that goes in has got to be accessible," said Angela Kennedy, last year's RHIA President, in reference to ICD-10, "but data integrity is also so important. It's got to be clean. Garbage in, garbage out, right? It's really important that we have clean data that can address issues not only of quality, but also of cost. If we have that, and we put those principles in place, it'll really be a catalyst to help organization make the most of their assets."

Adopting new chiropractic documentation software can help ensure streamlined recordkeeping, cleaner data and ICD-10 compliance. 

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Had everything gone to plan, the U.S. healthcare industry would be entering its first full week of ICD-10 use starting today. Instead, we're still one year out from implementing the new coding system. The 12-month delay announced by Congress and the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) earlier this year was and remains a controversial topic among providers, vendors, clinics and hospitals.

On one hand, many of these practices said they simply wouldn't be ready to accommodate ICD-10 and its tens of thousands of new diagnostic codes by October 1 of this year, and praised the year-long extension as a much needed reprieve. On the other, many complained that the industry was moving on track enough as is, and that by delaying the upgrade, CMS stalled momentum for ICD-10 adoption for everyone. 

No matter which side of this debate your practice may fall on, it's imperative to take advantage of the next 12 months as best as possible, to ensure that your chiropractic EHR coding needs will be fully up-to-date by this time next year. To that end, EHR Intelligence has compiled just a few of the topics that providers and payers should focus their attention on over the coming months:

• Participating in ICD-10 acknowledgment tests
• Enrolling in CMS end-to-end testing periods in January, April and July
• Ensuring that clinic staffers are thoroughly trained in ICD-10 so that codes are utilized properly and help streamline, rather than slow down, productivity
• Utilizing meaningful use Stage 2 reporting standards to create cross-compatibility between a practice's different offices.

Implementing the best chiropractic EHR software into a practice's workflow can help guarantee ICD-10 compliance by next October.

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While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has repeatedly said this year that October 1, 2015, will be the firm and final deadline for implementing ICD-10 — and that it won't be delayed another day past that — many in the healthcare industry have taken a "We'll believe it when we see it" approach. And could you blame them? ICD-10 has been delayed three times already, with CMS saying each one would be the last. Consequently, clinics and practices across the U.S. are now years behind many other countries in terms of up-to-date chiropractic EHR and diagnostic codes.

At its 2014 conference in San Diego, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) addressed this very subject and issued a veritable call to arms among its attendees that the industry would not tolerate any further dawdling on ICD-10. As the healthcare IT news source, Health Data Management, notes, the AHIMA prompted its 71,000 members over the summer to barrage Congress with thousands of letters and phone calls urging the importance of strictly adhering to the 2015 deadline.

The association reasserted its stance on this matter at the San Diego convention, highlighting not only the importance of implementing ICD-10 but the financial and logistical dangers that yet another extension could present.

"We know that our industry partners are too heavily invested in the future to allow another postponement. There is no way," Lynne Thomas Gordon, AHIMA CEO, told the crowd. "The ICD-10 experience has taught us so much about advocacy. We know how to stand up for ourselves. We know how to stand up for our patients, and we are not our mothers' AHIMA anymore." 

Invest in the best chiropractic EHR software today to ensure that your clinic's coding needs are ready for tomorrow.

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With clinics and other healthcare providers beginning to allocate more resources into ICD-10 readiness, ahead of next year's October deadline, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are also working to ensure this transition is accomplished as smoothly as possible. The federal agency has already released a number of online tools and webcast videos to better educate practices and vendors on the benefits of ICD-10, as well how to best accommodate its tens of thousands of new codes into an existing workflow. Now, CMS has planted flags for three weeks over the following year that will be devoted exclusively to ICD-10 testing.

EHR Intelligence reports that the CMS-appointed testing weeks will occur on November 17-21, 2014, and March 2-6 and June 1-5, 2015. These tests aim to help examine whether a practice's infrastructure can adequately make use of ICD-10, and what further measures, if any, may be necessary in order to best incorporate the new coding system into a physician's office or clinic.

"While submitters may test ICD-10 claims at any time through implementation, the ICD-10 testing weeks have been created to generate awareness and interest, and to instill confidence in the provider community that CMS and the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) are ready and prepared for the ICD-10 implementation," CMS writes in its official statement. "These testing weeks will allow trading partner's access to MACs and CEDI for testing with real-time help desk support. The event will be conducted virtually and will be posted on the CMS website, the CEDI website and each of MAC's website."

With just over a year to go until implementation is due, now is the time for clinics and practices to upgrade their chiropractic EHR software to an ICD-10 compliant system.

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While this year's ICD-10 delay — which pushed the implementation deadline by 12 months, to October 1, 2015 — was enacted for the expressed purpose of giving healthcare providers and vendors more time to to prepare themselves for the coding upgrade, a new poll finds rates of readiness at surprisingly and even disconcertingly low levels.

According to a recent study conducted this summer by SearchHealthIT and the College of Healthcare Management Executives (CHIME), only 10.7 percent of the over 300 healthcare groups polled said they were completely ready to implement ICD-10 into their practices. Not only is this figure somewhat worrisome, given that we're just over a year away from the new deadline, but it's one that has drawn ire from others within the industry.

"Ten percent? Give me a break," Dan Martich, chief medical information office for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), tells SearchHealthIT. "We're ready. We were ready a couple of months ago. Frankly, I'd be embarrassed if I were one of these other organizations."

Luckily, the poll results don't necessarily indicate that roughly 90 percent of clinics and other providers are completely ill-prepared for ICD-10. According to the results, 71.8 percent of those surveyed claimed "they were in various states of ICD-10 readiness," according to the source, showing that the vast majority of physicians, practices and hospitals aren't necessarily starting from scratch and may be well on track for next year's deadline, even if they aren't ready for it right now.

While there is still a year to go until the 2015 cut-off point, investing in new, ICD-10 compliant chiropractic EHR software now can help ensure your clinic is ahead of the game come next October.

The post How ready is the healthcare industry for ICD-10? appeared first on EHR Software News | BackChart.

Back in April, when Congress delayed the start of ICD-10 by at least another year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) wavered for weeks before making any official announcement of their own. Even then, it wasn't until July 31 — four months later — that the federal agency firmly set October 1, 2015, as the new deadline for implementation. Many healthcare providers had felt anxious and frustrated about being left waiting for so long without knowing what concrete date to work toward. But now that a specific deadline has been given, a number of these same practices still aren't feeling the urgency of ramping up their ICD-10 preparations.

According to Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the reason many of these practices are dragging their feet isn't out of laziness, but rather weariness over being burned by so many previous deadlines before.

"It's becoming increasingly difficult for practices to make the move," Tennant tells industry news source MedPage Today. "[Physicians have been pushing back] saying, 'Why should I invest because they're the moving the date every year?' And then there is the problem of vendors not being ready — the vendors don't want to invest much either, thinking the date may never stick. It's a terrible situation."

Pamela Jodock, senior director for Health Business Solutions of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), adds that some vendors slowed down their ICD-10 implementation efforts after hearing the delay and have either "severely decreased or completely stopped their communication with providers" altogether, fearing yet another delay. However, CMS stands by October 1, 2015, as the final deadline for ICD-10.

It's critical that clinics and practices invest in new chiropractic EHR software now to avoid logistical and productivity issues when the time comes next year to fully and finally adopt ICD-10.

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The road to ICD-10 is starting to pick up serious momentum again. When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced earlier this year that the long-delayed coding upgrade was being pushed back yet again, this time to October 1, 2015, many in the healthcare industry became subsequently worried that all of the time and money they had invested into the initiative — anticipating a 2014 implementation deadline — would be for nothing. But over the summer, ICD-10 preparations have been beginning to pick up speed again, with CMS making new tools available to providers and payers to help both understand the new coding system and learn best practices for adopting it into a practice's workflow.

To that end, CMS released a fact sheet earlier this month, outlining and debunking many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding ICD-10. Here are four of them, courtesy of industry news source FierceHealthIT:

• ICD-10 will be delayed again: It may be easy to think this as it's been delayed three times before already, CMS is firm in sticking with October 1, 2015, as the final deadline. According to the agency, any date past this point represents an increasingly smaller return on investment for clinics.
• ICD-10 requires too much detail for EHR documentation: While practices will be able to submit more specific diagnostic codes and EHR details, CMS points out that there will still be more nondescript codes available to use if the records don't require "a higher level of specificity."
• It's outdated: Although much of the rest of the developed world has already adopted ICD-10 into their medical practices, with ICD-11 slated to begin implementation in 2017, that does not mean ICD-10 itself is out of date. On the contrary, coding updates have been made made to ICD-10 in the years since its initial development, and will continue well after implementation in the U.S. is finalized.
• The tens of thousands of new codes make ICD-10 too complicated: "It won't be more complex, CMS says, just like adding words to a dictionary doesn't make it harder to use," writes FierceHealthIT. "The greater number of codes will in fact make it easier to find the correct code, CMS adds, and there will be an alphabetic index and electronic coding tools to help in selecting the right code."

Being able to best take advantage of ICD-10's new features — and prevent it from becoming a drag on your clinic's productivity — means needing up-to-date chiropractic documentation software. By upgrading your chiropractic EHR today, practices can save themselves plenty of logistical and billing headaches down the road.

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