Insights and recommendations for transition to ASC X12 5010 transaction standard and ICD-10 code sets

Foresight Corporation’s Chief Technology Officer Ed Hafner testified Thursday, December 10, before the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) Subcommittee on Standards, providing insights and recommendations to help the industry prepare for the upcoming transition to the ASC X12 5010 transaction standard and ICD-10 code sets, as mandated by HIPAA.

Hafner presented his testimony in conjunction with Jerry C. Connors, President of the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA). Both referred to the benefit of independent certification of 5010 readiness using a service such as the DISAcert^SM 5010 certification service, operated by DISA, which facilitates thorough testing through automated detection of complex use-case scenarios.

In his remarks, Hafner, who is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) and co-chair of several of the group’s committees, addressed testing, certification, and collaboration in preparation for the 5010 and ICD-10 transition. Among his recommendations:

• Testing collaboration through regional communities and through hub-and-spoke (payer-and-provider) relationships should be encouraged.
• Healthcare organizations should be encouraged to use a certification service that tests not only front- and back-end applications, but ensures full system readiness through robust scenario testing.
• Payers and providers should assert market-pressure on software and services vendors to deliver 5010-ready products earlier than December, 2010.
• Organizations should begin their Level II planning by mid-2010, and anticipate Level II tests for inclusion in Level I internal testing.
• Pilot migrations should be encouraged to identify and apply best practices into the general migration process.
• ICD-9 to ICD-10 Crosswalk tables should only be used to convert historical data, and not for ongoing production, otherwise the benefits of coding specificity for detailed reporting would be lost.

Source Foresight Corporation