Change is in the air! Are you ready?

[Trish Merchant, our business development rep, is getting lots of questions about ICD-10. She asked to write a post letting you know what SOS is doing about ICD-10. In consultation with Manon Faucher, our Lead Tech Support rep, she created the article below.

Not using our products? What is your software company doing to make your transition to ICD-10 an easy one?]

Of course I’m talking about changes with the International Classification of Disease system of coding (ICD). While the original intent for the ICD codes was for epidemiological, health management and clinical purposes, here in the U.S. the codes are used by payers for billing and reimbursement purposes as well.

On October 1, 2015 the code set will change. We will cease using the current ICD-9 code set and begin using the ICD-10 codes. Before you fall over at the thought of having to re-code patient accounts in a last-minute, rushed manner, SOS wants you to know that you can begin re-coding now, in advance of the change over date! To do this, we created an ‘ICD-10 Prep Utility’ in SOS Office Manager which will allow you to go through and re-code accounts as you have time to do so between now and October 1^st.

You must be running at least a 2014 version of SOS Office Manager to have this prep utility.

The prep utility can be found in SOS Office Manager on the “Tools” menu, then select “ICD-10 Prep Utility.” By clicking on ICD-10 Prep Utility, you are taken into a holding area within the software. When you click on the Claim Setup (CSU) icon, you will be presented with a patient list. This allows you to go through your patient list at your leisure to enter the correct ICD-10 code, mark the coding as complete, then save the changes. If you have the Pro version of SOS Office Manager, any patient with more than one Claim Setup (CSU) will appear on the list for each CSU they have. Each CSU has a box that you can mark to indicate coding for that patient is complete. Once re-coding is done, you can import the new codes into SOS Office Manager by using the “Import from ICD-10 Prep Utility” function located under the Tools menu. You can also check a box to hide patient accounts with ‘Completed’ status, in order to ensure no patient account is overlooked!

You will be able to import at any time prior to October 1^st, even multiple times if necessary, without overwriting codes that were previously imported. If you have entered some ICD-10 codes in the Claim Setup of a patient account, the codes will not be used until the date that is entered in the field for ‘Date to Start Implementation of ICD-10 Diagnosis’. This field is found under Setup>System Options>Billing Tab and is located at the bottom of the page. This date should be set at 10/01/2015.

For some, re-coding may not be an arduous task, only taking a matter of minutes to complete. But for practices where this process may be more of an undertaking, the Prep Utility was created so re-coding could begin well in advance of the cut over date. When using the Prep Utility, you’ll notice that we populate the ICD-10 field for you whenever there is no ambiguity about which ICD-10 code to use. If there are two or more possible ICD-10 codes, we show you the possible matches in a pick list. You’ll want to make sure that the suggested ICD-10 code is correct, compared to the ICD-9 code that is currently being used. If you need coding assistance, we’ve also added links to websites that you can use to reference ICD-10 codes.

While the wait to switch to ICD-10 codes is almost over, you don’t have to wait any longer to begin the re-coding process! If you are an SOS customer and have a current Support Agreement, please call SOS the Support Team if you need help getting started!