HIPAA 5010: Breaking It Down

Published: 2011-07-21 13:56:05
Author: Azadeh Farahmand | Becker's ASC Review | July 19, 2011

The clock is ticking and it's no secret that the government mandated pair — HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 — requires healthcare organizations to cover an enormous amount of groundwork. Many healthcare providers have discovered the effort is much bigger than anticipated, but breaking it down into manageable pieces offers some breathing room and reassurance.

At a high level, end-to-end testing is a critical element in ensuring your 5010 readiness as all healthcare transactions that apply to your environment need to be evaluated. The end-to-end process allows all those involved in the generating, processing and paying for your claims to assess and audit in detail all the claims data and format changes. Of course, we cannot succeed alone. By now, you should have reached out to all trading partners and acquired the upgrade from your vendors. Hopefully your organization has set in place a strong steering committee to oversee the mandate, as well as created a timetable for system readiness and an education plan to understand the impact of the change. We understand you have competing priorities and maybe it's best to prioritize and budget for impact assessment and systems remediation and training.

At a more granular level, healthcare providers should take note of the changes and requirements that could greatly affect their business office and even cash flow.

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