Dive Brief:
- Premier Healthcare Alliance has sent a letter to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner urging the agency to set the new ICD-10 implementation deadline for October 1, 2015, according to Healthcare IT News.
- In the letter, Premier's Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Blair Childs argue that switching code sets could help "improve quality while safely reducing costs."
- Childs also argued that having the more extensive ICD-10 code set in place "will help our health care industry's larger transition to rewarding providers for quality of care, resulting in the development of more robust quality measures."
Dive Insight:
Given that hospitals were generally better prepared for the previous deadline for the transition, and have already sunk a lot of money into that preparation, it makes sense that a hospital organization like Premier would push CMS to set the earliest date possible for the next transition. This may not be good news for doctors, many of whom were not prepared for the previous deadline, but the October 1, 2015 deadline works for hospitals.