The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) understands that it takes time for providers to upgrade to EHR technology that is certified for 2014. It is therefore allowing a one-time 3-month reporting period in year 2014 in which eligible providers and hospitals will have the ability to achieve meaningful use status. The deadline for eligible providers is October 1, 2014. The deadline for eligible hospitals is July 1, 2014. Providers who see to it earlier in the year can even manage to receive incentives for the first quarter of 2014.

Demonstrating Meaningful Use
All providers must demonstrate their meaningful use for 90 days in the first year of participation. After the first year, Medicare providers will be required to demonstrate meaningful use for a full year, with year 2014 being the only exception, as described in the next section. Medicaid-only providers will not be required to demonstrate meaningful use after their first year. However, they would follow the same overall structure of two years meeting the criteria of each stage.

2014: The Exception to the Rule
Regardless of their stage of meaningful use, providers in year 2014 only need to report their EHR meaningful use for 3 months of the year. The difference between the reporting period for Medicare and Medicaid providers is as follows:

Medicare providers: CMS wants your reporting period to align with existing CMS quality measurement programs. The 3-month reporting period is therefore set to the fiscal year for hospitals and CAHs, and the calendar year for EPs.

Medicaid Providers: Hospitals and EPs eligible only for Medicaid EHR incentives are not required to align their reporting period the way Medicare providers are required to do. 4.13.14 [Resources: ICD-10]

A New Set of Codes
ICD-10-CM stands for “International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification”. This references the newly expanded diagnosis code set that is poised to replace the current ICD-9-CM Volumes 1 and 2. ICD-9 has a cutoff date of October 1, 2015. After this time, claims filed by HIPAA-covered entities – health plans, clearing houses, and healthcare providers required to send/accept electronic transactions – using ICD-9 would be denied without payment.

ICD-10-CM is being introduced to help diagnose and record diagnostics with considerably more detail and specificity. While the ICD-9 set contained about 14,000 diagnosis codes, ICD-10 contains over 69,000. ICD-10 was developed for use in all healthcare settings in the United State, and features many advances in clinical medicine.

Making the Transition Seamless
This code set change is a big one. The huge expansion in diagnosis codes means you need to work with a team that has prepared for the move and is already well versed in all the new codes. MD Billing Solutions has conducted company-wide training and testing to get our staff ready for October 1st. We will help all our partners transition to the ICD-10 system with no hiccups and without any slowdown in patient care. In addition to our experts being ready, all our software solutions have been updated to use the correct ICD-10 code set from October 1 and on.

What do you need to do? Not much, really. We will handle the entire ICD-10 update process, sparing you the hassle and responsibility burden of meeting these new compliance requirements. MD Billing Solutions will also provide the ICD-10 upgrade to all its clients at no charge, making this transition easy on the mind and on the pocket.

What are some of the ICD-10 improvements?

Expanded Injury Codes with 3-7 Characters
Increased Diagnosis Codes for More Specificity
Diagnosis/Symptom Code Combinations for Condition Description
Added Information Regarding Ambulatory/Managed Care
Greater Specificity and Finer Detail Overall