ICD-10 budget higher

Time to tighten the belt on the physician practice budget.  ICD-10 implementation is now expected to cost up to 5 times more than originally estimated.

In a 2008 report, the cost of ICD-10 implementation was estimated at $83,000 for small physician practices.  The current report now estimates that cost up to $226,000.  Large physician practices were previously estimated to take a $2.7 million hit implementing ICD-10; now that number is up to $8 million.  That is a big difference.

The high costs to transition to ICD-10 are a result of many factors, including upgrading Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and Practice Management Systems (PMS), training employees, and seeing fewer patients as staff takes time to adjust to the new codeset and systems. 
October 1st remains the date set for all HIPAA entities to transition to ICD-10.  Pinch your pennies now.