It’s not surprising that the buzz around ICD 10 among dental practices is mainly about ICD 10 billing and coding; but what’s worrisome about this single-dimensional focus is that its obscuring practices to the other areas that are just as important. Let’s look at the non-billing and coding areas that are not getting their due attention.
When you closely look at them, what becomes clear is that successful adoption of ICD 10 is an outcome of due attention paid to these areas. If you are still a sceptic, the points below will help:
Business and clinical process changes will cover areas like dental physician query process, data extracts and quality improvement, revenue cycle management and so on.
ICD 10 is much more investigative in nature than ICD 9 which will require dental practices to support every dental service and sub-service they assign codes to with documentation to establish their necessity in a dental treatment episode.
Data management – Without proper management of the data which is generated during a dental treatment episode, sound documentation, which as mentioned above is a necessity for ICD 10, can’t be ensured.
Technical development – A very generic term but when used in context of ICD 10 it takes on a holistic meaning covering technical areas around implementation of ICD 10 and putting it in practice. A thorough technical development includes locating all interfaces and systems that capture codes and ramping them or configuring them to ICD 10 needs so that they can adequately be used for code capturing and reporting.
Training – Identifying ICD 10 areas that your staff would require to be trained in and training your staff in them is the key to long-term ICD 10 success.
MBC has been helping several dental practices to cope up with these upcoming ICD 10 challenges by guiding them to address the above-mentioned areas. These practices have been preparing to be able to meet ICD 10 technical challenges like increase in codes, an all-alphanumeric composition of codes, technological issues, specificity of ICD 10, etc.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US can also help you, with its Outsourcing services handling the entire range of activities involved in the upcoming ICD 10 billing and coding starting from preparation of claims through submission to post-submission follow-ups. Our service modules are flexible and if you want to avoid paying for an entire service suite, then, once you have done your ICD 10 assessment and know which areas you would need our assistance in, you can pick and choose our services related only to those areas and save cost.
