Immigrate to I-10: AAPC Prepares for the New Land
Friday, October 23rd, 2009When you open the October 2013 Coding Edge, we’ll be using ICD-10-CM.
After more than a decade of false starts and revisions, we are all finally packing for destination ICD-10, which features a new language of an enormous but elegant “smart code” set. For a profession whose members weather weekly reimbursement rules and quarterly code changes, implementation seems both reassuringly far away and uncomfortably close. And frankly, after experiences like the Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) Black Box Edits and various audit programs, it’s hard to get excited about embarking on a boat for yet another federal initiative.
That’s why when AAPC leaders looked at the journey ahead, they searched for “the right approach, the right curriculum, the right timing, and the right cost,” said Deborah Grider, CPC, CPC-I, CPC-H, CPC-P, COBGC, CEMC, CDERC, CCS-P. As AAPC vice president of strategic development and former National Advisory Board (NAB) president, she’ll guide us through the transition. Grider is a long-time Coding Edge ICD-10 contributor and author of such coding standards as AMA Press’ Coding with Modifiers, with a new book, Preparing for ICD-10-CM: Make the Transition Manageable being released by the AMA this month.