Conserving the cash flow after ICD-10 deadline CureMD 07:36

Practices are expected to face financial hardships once the ICD-10 implementation starts. There are concerns among the practices that the payers will not be able to process their claims in a timely manner. Healthcare experts advise the practices to save enough cash for six months in order to keep their practice running. Doing so is not possible for many practices especially after they pray to train their staff and upgrade their equipment.

There are some things that practices can do to alleviate financial pressure after the October 1 deadline.

• Practices should not hesitate to spend money on teaching and training their staff on medical coding. As it will increase their productivity and efficiencies, meaning they will be sending more claims and receiving lesser in return due to coding errors.
• Practices clear out their build up of reimbursements before the deadline.
• Increase the productivity now as it will not affect the practice harder as the productivity drops after Oct 1.
• Test with healthcare payers as it will give idea on how reimbursements occur or it will help practices find out if there are any changes in reimbursement policies.
• Measure the time it takes for a claim to process so that you will know if any issue occurs after October 1.
• Keep your ICD-9 codes ready because you never know when a payer asks you to send ICD-9 codes even after October 1 deadline.

Doing all this is not an easy task. But the practices have enough time to get themselves ready and plan out a strategy that keeps their practice running smoothly after October 1 deadline.