Curious as to what impact the forthcoming ICD-10 mandate might have on The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services? An analysis of CMS determined the seven major business realms that ICD-10 will touch.

In a new report Strategies and Priorities for IT at CMS, the National Research Council, charged with helping CMS better understand how to modernize its IT infrastructure, outlined those business areas and assessed their impact: 

1. Medicare fee-for-service claims – very high impact
2. Risk adjustment – very high impact
3. Quality (including quality assessment tools, quality measurement and payment initiatives and quality improvement activities) – high impact
4. Medicare integrity – high impact
5. Research, evaluation and demonstrations – moderate impact
6. Medicaid (including Medicaid operations, integrity and policy) – moderate impact (Note: does not include state Medicaid programs and their operations)
7. Medicare call center – low impact

“Since the completion of the impact assessment, CMS has been progressively implementing a comprehensive ICD-10 project management plan under the direction of the Office of E-Standards and Services (OESS),” the National Research Council wrote in its report, adding that the Jan. 1, 2012 HIPAA 5010 deadline is a critical step toward ICD-10. “CMS is leading the industry and is on target with the implementation of 5010.”