It appears providers will have no new diagnosis code changes to contend with next year.
CMS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are officially proposing no changes to the ICD-9-CM or ICD-10-CM code sets for 2013. The proposed 2013 payment rule for hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (IPPS) and long-term care hospitals, where CMS historically has announced proposed changes to the diagnosis code set, included the following:
“For FY 2013, there were no changes to the ICD-9-CM coding system due to the partial code freeze or for new technology. Therefore, there will be no new, revised or deleted diagnosis and procedure codes.”
CMS officials expect no new updates to the ICD-9 code set. In addition, they plan no new code changes to ICD-10 until October 2015, the agency announced recently.
— Laura Evans (levans@decisionhealth.com)
Editor’s note: For the proposed rule go to: http://tinyurl.com/d4c9sy3

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