Transition to ICD-10 - a Tough Job Made Easy by Bristol Healthcare Services

Cerritos, CA, May 20, 2015 --(PR.com)-- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made the final decision regarding ICD-10 transition and the deadline has been fixed as October 1, 2015. ICD-10 (or) International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision is an improvement over the existing ICD-9 code set. Even though the change is all set to happen, ICD-9 will continue to be in use until September 30, 2015. It is to be noted that the change to ICD-10 does not affect CPT coding for outpatient procedures in any manner.

The main reason for the transition is:
· ICD-9 produces limited set of data about patients’ medical conditions and hospital inpatient procedures.
· ICD-9 is very old and has completely outdated terms. It is incompetent with the current medical practice.
· Most of the ICD-9 categories are already full and the structure of ICD-9 restricts the addition of new codes after a certain extent.

In response to the new deadline, AMA President-elect Steven J. Stack has stated, "While the AMA appreciates that physicians have additional time to comply with ICD-10, we continue to have fundamental concerns about ICD-10 and its implementation, which will not be resolved by the extra time. The AMA has long considered ICD-10 to be a massive unfunded mandate that comes at a time when physicians are trying to meet several other federal technology requirements and risk penalties if they fail to do so."

Bristol Healthcare Services, one of the premier offshore medical coding companies have already prepared themselves for this transition. They have been providing rigorous training for their staffs so as to make the transition a smooth and error free one for the clients.

Visit www.bristolhcs.com for more information regarding ICD-10 readiness.