Update on ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 Partial Code Freeze

 Greetings everyone!

 On September 15, I attended the ICD-9 CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting held by CMS.  I wasn’t able to participate on the second day, September 16, due to scheduling conflicts but here is important information from Sept. 15 regarding the Partial Code Freeze for ICD-9 and ICD-10. 

Overall, the Sept 15 meeting seemed more of a “hearing for providers” vs. an informational meeting on the ICD-10 implementation, including all relevant aspects such as ICD-9 mapping, etc. Some key take-away info pertained to the Partial Code Freeze.

Here is an excerpt which you might find useful as you prepare for ICD-10:

Partial Code Freeze for ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 Finalized

The ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee will implement a partial freeze of the ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 (ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS) codes prior to the implementation of ICD-10 on October 1, 2013. There was considerable support for this partial freeze. The partial freeze will be implemented as follows:

 The last regular, annual updates to both ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 code sets will be made on October 1, 2011.

 On October 1, 2012, there will be only limited code updates to both the ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 code sets to capture new technologies and diseases as required by section 503(a) of Pub. L. 108-173.

 On October 1, 2013, there will be only limited code updates to ICD-10 code sets to capture new technologies and diagnoses as required by section 503(a) of Pub. L. 108-173. There will be no updates to ICD-9-CM, as it will no longer be used for reporting.

 On October 1, 2014, regular updates to ICD-10 will begin.

The ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee will continue to meet twice a year during the partial freeze. At these meetings, the public will be asked to comment on whether or not requests for new diagnosis or procedure codes should be created based on the criteria of the need to capture a new technology or disease. Any code requests that do not meet the criteria will be evaluated for implementation within ICD-10 on and after October 1, 2014, once the partial freeze has ended.

Codes discussed at the September 15 – 16, 2010, and March 9 – 10, 2011, ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting will be considered for implementation on October 1, 2011, the last regular updates for ICD-9-CM and ICD-10. Code requests discussed at the September 14 – 15, 2011, and at additional meetings during the freeze, will be evaluated for either the limited updates to capture new technologies and diseases during the freeze period or for implementation to ICD-10 on October 1, 2014. The public will be actively involved in discussing the merits of any such requests during the period of the partial freeze.

The rest of the meeting was spent on discussions regarding:

1)       ICD-9 missing procedure codes per the testimony of various providers.

2)      Providers pointing out that the GEMS codes need to be reviewed and further refined since they are not accurate.

3)      Providers from research centers requesting for their procedure to be given a code (some were already FDA approved; some were still in the clinical trial phase but already requesting codes, since they wanted to beat the Code Freeze deadline). 

The audience recommendation to those still in clinical trial was  to give them a code once trial is completed and already FDA approved for use

Audio and written transcripts will be posted within several weeks of the meetings at: http://www.cms.gov/ICD9ProviderDiagnosticCodes/03_meetings.asp

I hope this is helpful information to you.  Let me know your thoughts on these announcements.