We’re seeing a lot of pushback against ICD-10 implementation, with the American Medical Association’s “vigorous opposition” at the extreme. Gloom and doom types equate to potential IT disaster to Y2K. Ever since watching T. Bedirhan Üstün, M.D. — curator of the International Classification of Diseases, the master coding set from which ICD-10 is derived – present at the American Health Information Managers (AHIMA) annual meeting last October, a question’s been gnawing at me:
If flipping the switch on ICD-10 come Oct. 1, 2013 will be such a disaster as groups like the AMA claim it will be, then why didn’t it bring down the European and Asian health systems that implemented their own flavors of ICD-10 years ago?
The reporter in me – especially when hearing people couch ICD-10 in terms like “unfunded mandate” and “sky-is-falling” hyperbole – suspects it’s all about politics. During the course of debate in these times, it seems as if people on both the left and right resort to browbeating rhetoric faster than I’ve ever seen in my life. And why not? Reciting the catchphrase du jour requires far less reasoning than a well-constructed, original thought.
