Make Your ICD-10 Training Plan with These Tips

ICD-10 affects virtually everyone in the practice in some way. It is important for everyone to learn how ICD-10 may affect their role. Only then can you plan education and training accordingly. Here's a quick overview on the impact of ICD-10 to various roles. 

Practice Managers will need to update and create policies, check on updates to payer contracts, manage budgeting and financial planning, review and update forms, and learn about any software changes.

Front desk staff may need to know enough ICD-10 and software changes to do prior authorizations or collect patient payments.

Billers and coders will be most impacted and need to understand the documentation and coding changes, payer changes, and software changes.

Clinical providers also need to understand both coding and documentation changes along with software changes.

Everyone can benefit from some basic training that may be provided by your software vendor, specialty society, or groups like AAPC and AHIMA. This overview should cover what ICD-10 is, how it impacts your practice, the structure of the coding, what types of documentation changes to expect and how to prepare your practice.

Coders and billers who need to update certifications will need to sign up for certification training, which can be two full days and cost as much as $1500. This will require some planning to accommodate cost and time off. These staff are responsible for ensuring the claims are accurate and for following them through until they are paid. Make sure they get the training the need.

Providers can get some additional training on documentation through specialty societies and groups like AAPC and AHIMA. Improving documentation to meet the increased need for specificity is also very important to ICD-10 success.

The rest of your staff should be able to find basic training online, often for free. If time and resources and short, one cost effective strategy is to send an individual in the practice, or in a larger practice a group of individuals, to training (online or in person). Then have trained staff come back and train others.

This is a great solution for small practices. Send your biller or coder to a training (especially anyone who needs to update certification) and then have that person come back and train people in other roles on just the tasks that are pertinent to them.

For more tips and information about ICD-10, visit the ICD-10 Resource Center.