The American Health Information Management Association has issued a strong recommendation for healthcare providers to adopt ICD-10 as quickly as possible. This comes as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contemplates delaying the deadline for one year, until Oct. 1, 2014.

[See also: ICD-10 delay should be one year, says HHS.]

“Our preference is for no delay in ICD-10 implementation and compliance,” said AHIMA’s CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, “but we are gratified that HHS is recognizing the hard work and efforts already expended in the implementation process and has decided to keep the extension to essentially the shortest period possible – just one year.” In February, HHS announced its plan to re-examine the timetable for ICD-10 implementation. 

Thomas Gordon also noted that AHIMA’s call for HIPAA covered entities to continue their ICD-10-CM/PCS implementation was justified when looking at the HHS analysis. 

“The transition to ICD-10 is inevitable and remains the future for coding classification systems.  We are sorry to see that our members and organizations following HHS’ initial calendar may suffer from the delay, as will our many higher education colleges and universities that changed their curricula to meet this same requirement date.”

Gordon said AHIMA understands the pressures many small providers and practices have in meeting the current requirements. However, a continued delay and uncertainty in the implementation date is in no one’s best interest, she said.

[See also: ICD-10 inches closer to delay, ICD-11 in the wings.]

“Further delays in our nation’s efforts to implement electronic health records and information exchange will only increase costs in the long run and result in lost benefits from having health information available where and when it is needed,” said Gordon.

“AHIMA and its component state organizations will continue to be a valuable and comprehensive resource in providing assistance to small providers, practices and others that need support in implementation and training necessary to achieve full compliance,” she added.

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