News: ICD-10 crosswalks, White Paper, CMS teleconference available

The transition from ICD-9-CM Volume 3 procedure codes to ICD-10-PCS will be by all accounts a significant adjustment, writes Shannon E. McCall, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, CEMC, CPC-I, CCDS, director of HIM and coding at HCPro, Inc., and an AHIMA-certified ICD-10 trainer. In her White Paper “ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS: Are YOU Getting Ready?” McCall says many facilities have not yet begun to prepare for the transition.

CDI specialists, however, should start educating themselves about the changes since ICD-10-PCS (the code set used for inpatient procedures) is fundamentally different in structure from the ICD-9 version. Not only does it include a tremendous amount of new codes, it uses PCS tables for code assignment rather than a tabular list as seen in ICD-9-CM Volume 3.

 

For additional information, CMS posted the 2011 versions of the ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS crosswalks, formally referred to as the General Equivalence Mappings (GEMs), on its ICD-10 website. It also released a summary of the comments the agency received regarding the GEMs and the types of changes CMS adopted based on the comments.

 

CMS will hold a national provider teleconference regarding ICD-10 implementation on Wednesday, January 12, at 1 p.m. The call will discuss some of the basic tenets of the coding change, the latest GEM release, use of unspecified codes in both ICD-9-CM and ICD-10, as well as strategies for internal planning and organization regarding the change. To register, visit www.cms.gov, by 1 p.m., January 11.