ICD 10 is scarry and ICD 11 is comming

ICD 10 came into use among the WHO member countries in 1994 and the United States completed revising ICD 10 to ICD-10-CM in 2003 and it then took more than a decade for the United States to implement ICD-10-CM i.e. in 2013. Implementation of ICD-10-CM in Oct 2013 is usually described as Y2K of medical coding, because of the huge transition that involves not only medical coding training but also transition of IT system associated with the revenue cycle management of providers and payers. This implementation will cause backlogs for several months and even after complete transition productivity will come down due to complexity of ICD-10-CM. The ICD-10-CM is so complex and extensive that crosswalk software would not produce desired results as it will throw too many options to choose from and thus requiring the coders to work more like an analyst than rather a medical coder of present day.

Now, many are asking the question that since ICD 11 is in development then why not directly implement ICD 11 instead of ICD 10. The alpha draft of ICD 11 was made online in July in 2011 and the final draft is expected to be available by 2015. Although ICD 11 will be ready by 2015, it may take at least two decades for its implementation in the United States. According to a study, ICD 10 implementation will cost around six to 14 billions dollars in a time span of three-years. This is a costly investment by the US health care industry and hence the industry will not be ready anytime soon to spend another 10-20 billions dollars for ICD 11 implementation.