With the switchover to ICD-10 some nine months away, many healthcare groups are rushing to be ready for go-live. However, from many recent accounts, that rush is really more of a slow walk.   

 

At least according to findings KPMG published Jan. 8, which jibe with WEDI’s freshest ICD-10 impact.

 

What can be taken as a bit of good news is that 76 percent of respondents to a series of KPMG surveys indicated they have completed an impact assessment, widely considered the first key step en route to ICD-10. 

 

[See also: Outlook grim for docs' ICD-10 readiness.]

 

Yet fewer than half, 42 percent specifically, are actually conducting system testing already, while 34 percent are unsure whether they will or not.

 

System testing is not the only kind of testing in question, either. Healthcare entities are in about the same place regarding testing with external entities, such as clearinghouses, payers, providers and trading partners. Some 26 percent are in motion, 33 percent haven’t started but plan to, and 38 percent were unsure.

 

When it comes to the natural progression toward end-to-end testing, only 33 percent said they do it, 28 percent do not yet but plan to, and a somewhat surprising 36 percent were unsure. 

 

Survey results on user acceptance testing were a near match. Currently, 35 percent of respondents are doing so, 27 percent have not yet tested but said they plan to, and 37 were unsure when answering.

 

In total, "organizations are largely unprepared for ICD-10 implementation," KPMG asserted in its report.

 

WEDI's latest readiness survey, published in mid-December, found some 80 percent of participants will not begin testing prior to 2014, a situation WEDI chairman Jim Daley described as well behind the recommended timelines and suggested that "significant disruption" is possible on Oct. 1, 2014, unless the industry picks up the pace.

 

"If you have not started your implementation plan, is it impossible to get ready at this time?" Wayne Cafran, KPMG's advisory principal for healthcare and life sciences asked rhetorically. "It's not impossible but you need a quality assessment and a flawless execution of your implementation strategy -- and that needs to happen now."

 

Why? Because ICD-10 testing cannot really begin without that impact assessment.

 

This story first appeared in Government Health IT here.