Several times a year, healthcare organizations must update multiple systems with ICD-10-CM code set changes by the CMS deadline.
The rate and volume of code and content updates released by the standards bodies have been steadily increasing, including ICD-10. In fact, the ICD-10 updates for 2023 include 1,176 new billable codes and 251 invalidated codes. Each release requires a series of steps to download, distribute, format, analyze, configure, review, and approve changes that affect operations across the organization.
For many healthcare organizations, annual code set updates are a manual, time-consuming process involving several teams and many, many spreadsheets. It is estimated that it takes one full-time engineer at least 10 hours to update one dataset with over 25 reference tables and/or value sets.
A healthcare terminology management solution can help
Wolters Kluwer partners with health systems and health plans to improve the process of updating ICD-10 code updates. A healthcare terminology and code set management solution can help:
- Automate work that typically takes weeks to less than a day
- Ensure accuracy with a single source of truth
- Simplify data governance across the organization
Our team of clinical terminology experts understands how big of an undertaking it is to update ICD-10 codes across the healthcare ecosystem. Whether this year's updates were smooth sailing or a complete mess up until the last day, we can help improve the process for next year.