HCS Interactant First to Post-Acute Care Market with ICD-10 Readiness
Wall Township, NJ (PRWEB) March 25, 2014 -- HCS, a leading provider of clinical and financial healthcare information systems to more than 4,500 active client locations, today announced that all Interactant™ modules meet the current ICD-10 standards, more than six months ahead of the U.S. federal government deadline.
"We’re ready for ICD-10 and ahead of the post-acute care market," said Thomas J. Fahey, president and CEO at HCS. "Our clients can begin testing today to ensure ICD-10 compliance several months prior to the crucial deadline of October 1, 2014. We committed substantial resources to our software platform readiness and testing strategies that Interactant clients can leverage immediately."
ICD-10, a comprehensive diagnostic and procedure coding system, will replace ICD-9 on October 1, 2014. ICD-10 expands available codes from about 14,000 to 68,000 for diagnoses, and from about 4,000 to roughly 87,000 for procedures. The code expansion is designed to sharpen specificity and accuracy in the assignment of diagnoses and procedures, foster better quality of care data reporting, and improve accuracy in billing and claims submissions.
HCS started preparation programming for ICD-10 in 2012. In late 2013 and early 2014, the company began internal testing and validation with federal DRG grouping, 3M encoding and various HL-7 interfaces. In February 2014, the ICD-10 update became an official enhancement to Interactant, making HCS ready for the transition well in advance of the CMS mandated transition date. This allows our customers to install early, begin training their staff regarding the new coding standards, and feel confident in their readiness to bill under the new standard.
“Perhaps the biggest challenge facing providers are the numbers and specificity of new codes in version 10, and the fact that virtually none of the version 9 codes translate directly to version 10. CMS has provided a translation tool between the two code sets, known as GEMs (General Equivalency Mappings),” explains Tom S. Visotsky, executive vice president of sales and marketing at HCS. “Interactant has built-in GEM functionality to make the transition to ICD-10 an easier process for our end-users and allows both forward and backward mapping,” Visotsky added.
About HCS
HCS has delivered healthcare information technology to providers since 1969. HCS Interactant™ is an integrated platform of clinical and financial modules focused across the spectrum of care including long-term care, long-term acute care, inpatient, outpatient, behavioral health, and rehabilitation.
For more information, visit http://www.HCSInteractant.com or call 800.524.1038.
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Ford Phillips, HCS, http://www.hcsinteractant.com, +1 (618) 463-1027, [email protected]
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