MedAptus Customers Getting Jump on ICD-10

MedAptus recently announced that approximately 4,000 end-users of its charge capture and management suite have successfully rolled out the company's ICD-10 software upgrade. Customer early adopters of the expanded code set represent new clients that elected to go live in ICD-10, as well as existing clients that underwent the upgrade process from ICD-9, across the company's Pro and Tech offerings.

MedAptus first released its ICD-10 system upgrade in late 2012 based on high customer demand for ample testing time. The company's software design approach was multiyear and multipronged, focused on providing physicians and other point-of-care users with new and intuitive ICD-10 code look-up and selection tools. Enhanced functionality for real-time messaging between clinical and coding staff is also an important piece of the offering, ensuring providers have easy access to organizational ICD-10 expertise.

Despite another transition date delay to the mandated adoption of ICD-10 earlier this year, MedAptus customers elected to move to the code set due to MedAptus's unique, automated dual-processing capabilities. In summary, providers enter diagnosis data in ICD-10; MedAptus crosswalks these entries back to ICD-9 for billing purposes. Both codes and their descriptions are made available to administrative users of the company's Coder Workstation to aid with charge review prior to billing.

Customers that have implemented the software in recent months report that it provides tremendous assistance around training initiatives, internal documentation audits, and educates coding staff on backward crosswalk mappings. For larger organizations, another benefit of early upgrade lies in flexible system design permitting roll-out from one provider at a time to one group at a time, with no impact on users remaining on ICD-9 until October 1, 2015. One customer that appreciated this approach is a large hospital with nearly 1,400 physician users. The organization started the upgrade process late in 2013 on a group-by-group basis and now has over 900 doctors converted with most reporting an easy transition.

"When we looked at the increased specificity of ICD-10, and the subsequent increase in the volume of codes, we realized that providers from different specialties would be affected in varying degrees. The surgical specialties, such as orthopedics, presented the greatest challenges, and a simple search tool would not be enough to allow these providers to get to the 'right' code. However, what we found after developing our patent-pending Search Cloud was that this tool would make it simple for all providers, regardless of specialty, to quickly and easily find the codes they need," says Ryan Secan, MD, MedAptus chief medical officer. Secan was a chief architect behind MedAptus's ICD-10 Search Cloud tool which has received strong physician feedback for its ability to take a clinical end-user from thousands of diagnosis code possibilities to less than ten with just a few clicks or taps.

Supporting the words of Secan are the customers representing the nearly 4,000 users live on MedAptus for ICD-10. These large, multispecialty organizations utilize MedAptus to document both inpatient and outpatient services from clinical areas that include oncology, hospital medicine, pediatrics, surgery, and orthopedics. Many end-users report that with MedAptus' new ICD-10 search tools, diagnosis assignment in ICD-10 is even easier than it had been in ICD-9.

Provider groups interested in reviewing MedAptus' ICD-10 functionality for charge capture and operational charge management can attend a demo of the system by registering online. These ongoing webinar sessions emphasize the dual-coding capabilities of the solution as well as the multitude of ICD-10 code search options that include a clinical search powered by IMO, configurable code favorites, historical ICD-9 term mappings, and a self-updating frequently used diagnosis listing based on code utilization. Provider groups can also schedule one-on-one meetings by contacting the company through its corporate website.

Source: MedAptus