When CMS and HHS announced the intent to delay ICD10, I highly doubt they thought they were opening the flood gates as badly as they have.
If they had properly thought this through, I have to imagine that they wouldn't have announced an intent to delay without a, ya know, new date in mind. Not just a press release thrown out there to throw critics a bone, but with a bona fide idea of she this new deadline will occur. Without, everyone is left in limbo.
At the heart of the delay is the quesiton on delay is this: What is the ultimate goal of changing the deadline?
If the answer is to allow for a leeway on enforcement, then adding a few months (3-6) on the backend like with what happened with 5010, doesn't really do much. If the the compliance date is February 1, 2014 now, what's the big deal? Is the AMA going to be happy? Is that truly changing much of anything?
If the answer is to give additional years on prep work, then everything done up until is wasted time and capital. If you went out and got an ICD10 certification from AHIMA and will pay the annual fee to keep said credential, are you really going to keep paying if the new date is 2015? If you won't be using all that knowledge? What about rushing all these IT upgrades and the costs associated with it. Boom, down the drain.
And it's not like healthcare costs are an issue right now, hospitals are just rolling in cash they can waste.
In all seriousness, while everyone has and should continue business as usual until a new date comes out, even that approach is ripe with danger for lost time and resources that if the delay is too big, you'll never get back.
Limbo....not the kind of play we need to be right now.
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