Tuesday, September 20, 2011

ICD10 Readiness

QUESTION
As a business partner, we are contacting you to establish what your
current ICD-10 readiness posture is and if your organization has a
comprehensive action plan designed to assure that your systems and data
will be able to accurately transact both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes.

ANSWER

We are well on our way to full ICD10 support; we expect to maintain backward compatibility for ICD9. For details, see the "ICD10-Based DRG Prototype" link at the top of this page.

Monday, September 19, 2011

APR or MS DRGs?

QUESTION

what version of DRGs are being used in your batch filter program APR or MS ?

ANSWER

We support only the US Federal DRG assignment algorithm. This algorithm is also called the "MS DRGs" (Medicare & Medicaid Services) and the "CMS DRGs" (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services).

We used to support New York state DRGs and a few others, but we got out of that business a while ago.

APR (All Payor, Refined) DRGs are a 3M thing and you find more information on their web site:

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3M_Health_Information_Systems/HIS/Products/APRDRG_Software/

Friday, September 9, 2011

How Many DX Codes?

QUESTION

Your documentation states that the groupers currently only utilize up to nine diagnosis codes. Are you planning on increasing that number to 25 in conjunction with the recent changes CMS has implemented?

ANSWER

Our ICD9-based DRG Assignment Engine supports up to 15 diagnosis codes. Our ICD10 prototype currently supports 30 diagnosis codes, but we only commit to supporting the expected 25.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Annual Release Dates

QUESTION

I just wanted to get a status update on the release date of the new grouper for this year and get on the list to obtain it as soon as possible.

ANSWER

Our products track with the US Federal (CMS) versions. They release on or about October 1st every year. We try to release as close to October 1st as we can. We usually release within five business days of October 1st. On rare occasion, we are later or earlier.

We cannot guarantee a release date as the CMS releases vary greatly in size and complexity.

We are aware that many of our customers need the release to be as close to October 1st as possible, so we are working hard this year to make sure that this happens, even as ICD10 looms over us.