Healthcare Providers Fret About Retaining Coders for Jump to ICD-10

A new report has found that healthcare providers have more confidence their technology will be ready for ICD-10 than their coding team.

Providers fear the human side of ICD-10 conversion will prove to be the biggest challenge, with losses in productivity and inadequate training, according to a new study released by the KLAS research company. In the report,”ICD-10 Perception: Can Technology Relieve Readiness Issues?” (purchase required), providers surveyed said their biggest concern will not be technology, but people.

This echoes the findings of New York University’s Langone Center, which last year shared its findings into ICD-10 conversion and offered the following advice for training and retaining coders:

• Prepare for productivity loss. For those healthcare organizations without a Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) program, the loss in productivity by coders is estimated to be 30 percent to 50 percent in the first year if ICD-10, according to Terri McCubbin, director of acute care consulting services for 3M Health Information Systems, NYU Langone’s consultant on ICD-10 conversion. Fortunately NYU Langone has a CDI program, and according to McCubbin will lose a maximum of 30 percent productivity, which will drop to around 10 percent in the second and subsequent years.
• Training. Inpatient coders will require between 65-80 hours of training; outpatient and professional coders 40 hours. The cost of training ranges between $500 to $5,000, depending upon method; computer-based training is far less expensive than in-person training, for example. Remember to budget for backfilling your coders who will be in training. The cost of backfilling one FTE coder during the transition to ICD-10 is estimated to be between $2,000 to $2,500.
• Move inventory coders or outpatient coders to inpatient services. ICD-10 for inpatient services is more challenging and those coders will be in high demand. Consider training your inventory coders or outpatient coders to code for inpatient services, and then backfill or hire to replace those roles that will be easier to fill.
• Consider retention bonuses. Many healthcare providers are negotiating retention bonuses with their existing coding staff to discourage poaching by other providers. The time to begin those negotiations is now.