Maintaining Positive Cash Flow in a Post-ICD-10 Environment

With only eight months to go, now is the time to ensure that your hospital or practice maintains a positive cash flow after ICD-10 goes live. A critical initiative will be to understand payers’ expectations regarding the processing of ICD-10 claims.

To start, create a spreadsheet that includes all the payers to which you billed accounts with dates of service in 2012 and 2013. For each payer, you will want to track the following items:

1. Confirmation in writing that the payer will be ready to accept and process ICD-10 claims as of Oct. 1, 2014;

2. ICD-10 claims testing status with your organization;

3. Review of ICD-10 updated payer contracts;

4. Review of ICD-10 reimbursement mappings; and

5. ICD-10 denials/pending claims.