CHICAGO -- Recognizing that there is no way to again delay ICD-10 implementation or just scrap it altogether, the American Medical Association (AMA) is asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to guarantee a "soft-landing" for the nation's physicians.
And the AMA defines soft-landing as a 2-year grace period "during which physicians will not be penalized for errors, mistakes, and or/malfunctions of the system."
Most of all, the AMA wants CMS to guarantee that the money will not stop. During the grace period the AMA wants guarantees that Medicare and Medicaid payments "will not be withheld based on ICD-10 coding mistakes ...".
This latest ICD-10 policy was unanimously approved -- without additional comment -- during the House of Delegates meeting at the AMA annual meeting.
The AMA has existing policy stating that ICD-10 should not be implemented, and the organization joined with other physician groups to twice delay the new codes from being implemented. But even the most outspoken of ICD-10 opponents, , a urologist who is president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama, conceded that the ICD-10 train has left the station.
Nonetheless, Terry exhorted the AMA to unleash a grassroots "letter-writing" campaign to pressure Congress to back the 2-year grace period. That effort, he said, was so critical that he pushed to have the ICD-10 issue addressed Monday, rather than Wednesday as had originally been scheduled. "We need to start writing those letters right away," Terry said.
The AMA also plans to gather data on the number of physicians who retire, leave private practice, or move to "all-cash practices" in response to ICD-10. The House didn't direct AMA staff to publicly release those data, but said they could be released to the public "if appropriate."