The US House of Representatives and the US Senate are currently off for their annual five-week August recess, which runs through Labor Day. When lawmakers return on Tuesday, September 8, they will have a very full plate for the rest of 2015. Topping that list will be fiscal issues, such as passing a spending bill by October 1 to avoid a government shutdown and raising the debt limit (again, by mid-October) to ensure that the Treasury can continue borrowing money to fund the government’s financial obligations. Along with other time-sensitive issues, this will not leave much time for healthcare related legislation. Most notably, the House now has only 10 days in session before the scheduled October 1 ICD-10 transition; this essentially guarantees the October 1 ICD-10 transition (even if support existed in Congress for another delay, there wouldn’t be enough time for the legislation to pass into law prior to October 1). (See here for more details.)
Impact for NextGen Healthcare clients: Clients must assume that Medicare, Medicaid and private payers will all require ICD10 claims starting October 1. If your practice has not yet upgraded to an ICD-10 compliant version of the application and KBM or applied the relevant hotfixes, you need to schedule this immediately to ensure ICD-10 compliance. For more information, please visit our ICD-10 page on Knowledge Exchange here.