ICD-10 has passed a major hurdle this week, as Congress passed a vote advocating the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) House Resolution 2: Medicare Access and Chip Administration Act. While the resolution still must pass the Senate vote on Monday, April 13, 2015 before final approval, President Obama has declared that he will pass the bill if it reaches him.

Although there are only 6 months left for completing ICD-10 testing, WEDI reports1 that as much as 40% have not even begun their payer testing.

So what can the industry do with the remaining 6 months to mitigate the risk of not completing their ICD-10 testing?

Tom Parnon, spokesperson for QualiTest USA, states, “The key to the whole thing is designing a risk-based testing strategy, in the limited time left. Obviously time and financial resources must be spent carefully, in such short supply. Even at this point, reaching out to payors is worth the time spent. Most will not be likely to have the time to spend testing, but there are still some that will. All revenue impact testing that can be done, in our opinion, is worth performing.”

Although industry studies indicate that less than 5% potential revenue impact due to DRG shifts, each provider’s experience will be different. For many providers, even 1% shift can be potentially cataclysmic. A realistic approach is to quickly get testing professionals to assess your current situation and establish a risk-based testing approach that your institution can afford.

With so little time left, accessing partners with experience and customized tools is the key to performing as much testing as possible in the little time that is left.

QualiTest will be presenting their Healthcare IT testing services at Booth 5431 at HIMSS 2015 in Chicago. Amongst their Radiology and Medical Device testing services, they will be discussing the triumphs that QualiTest has encountered with ICD-10 testing, including the integration of a “golden dataset” of records with accelerators to decrease the time of testing, getting tangible end-to-end testing from internal and external EHR systems.

About QualiTest

QualiTest is the world’s largest pure play software testing and QA company. Testing and QA is all that we do! We design and deliver contextualized solutions that leverage deep industry-specific understanding with technology-specific competencies and unique testing-focused assets. QualiTest delivers results by combining customer-centric business models, critical thinking and the ability to gain a profound comprehension of customers’ goals and challenges.

Citation

1.    Conn, Joseph. “ICD-10 Survey Finds Delay May Have Been ‘self-perpetuating‘” Modern Healthcare. Modern Healthcare, 10 Apr. 2015. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.