SMS Council Offers Home Health Care Agencies Cost-Effective Solution in ICD-10 Transitioning

New York, NY, September 16, 2013 – SMS Council NY unveiled a cost-effective solution that will assist 14,000 US home health agencies complete their ICD-9 to ICD-10 transition in time for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) deadline. HHS has made it clear that the deadline for implementing the new ICD-10 coding standard is October 1, 2014.

SMS Council revealed that outsourcing coding is a viable and cost effective way to eliminate direct expenses for hiring certified ICD-10 coders and to maximize reimbursement from Medicare. Their experts also shared that ICD-10 coding efficiency and Medicare reimbursement testing, in addition to the initiation of agency personnel with ICD-10 fundamentals, coding anatomy and physiology, are all essential steps to the path of ICD-10 success.

Moreover, the council explained that the move to ICD-10 is made necessary by the fact that ICD-9 is already 30 years old, has outdated terms, is inconsistent with current medical practice, and produces limited data about patients’ medical conditions and hospital inpatient procedures. Also, the structure of ICD-9 limits the number of new codes that can be created, and many ICD-9 categories are now already full.

Finally, the rest of the world has been using ICD-10 for several years now, and is in fact gearing up for the move to ICD-11 by October 1, 2015, so the United States really has no choice but to catch up. Virtually every diagnosis code will be different between ICD-9 and ICD-10. Long-standing coding guidance will not apply to ICD-10 and veteran coders will have to “unlearn” ICD-9 coding guidance and go back to basics to learn ICD-10 coding from scratch.

For many home health care agencies, transitioning from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will be overwhelming, thus, SMS Council is helping home health agencies in the mapping of both the scope of the transition and the training required to ensure staff is up-to-speed before the required date in 2014.

All SMS Council ICD-10 training programs have been developed by the Council members who are certified by The Board of Medical Specialty Coding & Compliance. SMS Council is headquartered at 19 West 21st Street -Suite 504 New York, NY 10010, and can serve all US certified home health agencies.

For more information, please call SMS COUNCIL @ 212-609-3787 or email info@smscouncil.com

Website: www.smscouncil.com

SMS COUNCIL is a health care company you can fully trust. We are a team composed of individual professionals geared with more than 30 years of experience providing exceptional coding services and OASIS reviews. We believe that accuracy in documentation services is one of the crucial elements in delivering holistic care among the patients. SMS COUNCIL makes that happen through our incomparable ‘View & Review’® process.

19 West 21Street Suite 504 New York, NY 10010

This release was published on openPR.