News: PCS guidelines remain relatively unchanged

CMS released the Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting for ICD-10-PCS last week. Although they included nothing new, CDI specialists should review the guidelines with an eye toward incorporating their requirements into existing physician education. and querying efforts should continue. The new ICD-10-CM guidelines have not yet been released.

The code freeze (which essentially stopped the generation of any new codes for new procedures or changes within the existing code set) remains in effect despite the fact that CMS has not yet officially announced a new ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation date. CMS hinted in the IPPS Proposed Rule that October 1, 2015 may be its target and publicly stated that such a “go-live” date was its goal. However, the agency has not formally announced the Oct. 1, 2015 date.

CMS also posted the updated GEMs files. GEMs are a great tool to get you to the right starting place for how a code will map from ICD-9 to ICD-10 (keep in mind, however, that they are only a tool, and do not always result in a 1:1 translation).

CMA also released an updated version of the ICD-10-PCS Reference Manual which includes information about the ICD-10-PCS root operations, some text changes, and some coding.