Last week I asked how things were going with getting eCQMs into your EHR. You need to do this to avoid negative payment adjustments but also because your performance on quality measures may very likely be the way that payers decide WHETHER they will send patients to your wound center, how much they will contract for your services and how certain services like advanced therapeutics will be bundled into an episode of care. Getting the eCQMs isn’t the only challenge you will face with your hospital EHR. By this October, every certified EHR needs to have updated software to handle ICD-10 coding and the more than 30,000 new codes that entails. If an EHR vendor doesn’t have updated software installed and deployed in time, eligible providers could encounter what is euphemistically referred to a “financial interruption.”
Speaking of ICD-10, I sat through ANOTHER mandatory training exercise at my hospital so I could get a pin for the lapel of my lab coat. I randomly picked the GI doctors ICD-10 orientation because the timing worked for me. It didn’t matter which training I went to because none of the sessions had any relevance to wound care. I am curious to know if any of you have attempted to familiarize yourself with the ICD-10 codes relevant to wound care. You will be using them 12 weeks from now for your wound care patients and there are hundreds of them. Do you have any idea how your EHR vendor is going to handle that for your wound center?
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
The opinions, comments, and content expressed or implied in my statements are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of Intellicure or any of the boards on which I serve.
