AHIMA Take-away: Educate on ICD-10 NOW!
Posted on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 @ 06:00 AM
By Anita Archer, CPC
You had to wear earplugs – good ones – not to hear the refrain at AHIMA: Educate your clinicians & coders now on ICD-10 documentation requirements!
The industry used to say we could wait until six months before ICD-10 go-live to focus in on training. Not anymore. Now it is strongly advising that healthcare organizations use those six last months for reinforcement training. Start training yesterday.
But the specificity in ICD-10 is overwhelming! We have no budget! How do we train?
This is the other refrain – a kind of call and response. Here is our response:
- Get your most experienced coders certified to do ICD-10 train-the-trainer. Check out programs at your local AHIMA, AAPC, or other association chapters. It is too expensive to train everyone. Utilize your internal resources to save money.
- Conduct a documentation gap analysis – where in your organization is documentation not meeting ICD-10 specificity requirements? Focus your education on those areas as a beginning. Not everyone needs to be trained on everything. Targeting and customizing your training will save time and money. It will also be more successful.
- Start coders’ personal development goals now, and include refresher courses on anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. Register your coders for these courses now.
The bottom line is that the bottom line will be less impacted the earlier you start to train on ICD-10 documentation.
Download Steps to Stay Ahead of ICD-10