Although health care providers and payers are both scrambling to make the transition to ICD-10 standards by 2013, the good news is that they only have to go through the process once. This is, however, a double-edged sword, as these organizations only have one opportunity to get the process right.

ICD-10 vendors, on the other hand, are information technology experts, having gone through multiple iterations of ICD-10 implementation before working with you. With that said, picking the vendor who is able to meet your needs is one of the most important steps in the implementation process. Here are several guidelines to follow when picking through your suitors:

Align Your Incentives

You are hiring outside vendors to handle your ICD-10 implementation, obviously, as a means of importing their technical expertise to your organization. In order to get the most from your vendor, an obvious, but often overlooked factor is to maintain open lines of communication between you and your vendor. Caroline Piselli, program manager for ICD-10 at 3M Health Information Systems, advises health organizations to, “‘really dive in the weeds’ to ensure you and your vendor understand each other. Don’t assume that you are each talking about the exact same thing.”

For example, multi-facility health organizations will need to focus on inter-department integration, while a smaller practice should focus on maximizing the value of a smaller transition team.

ICD-10 Compatible versus ICD-10 Ready

Not surprisingly, communicating with your vendor about what you need to get done is also a contributing factor for the level of readiness your ICD-10 system is. According to Ken Lacy, CIO at Precyse Solutions, the sheer amount of data in ICD-10 will make it unmanageable without automated systems such as Computer Assisted Coding (CAC). CAC systems may come as ICD-10 compatible versus ICD-10 ready.

Lacy elaborates that ICD-10 compatible systems are just iterations of ICD-9 CAC products, while ICD-10 ready systems are freshly built from the ground-up. Although compatible CAC products will be the cheaper option, long-term problems, such as coding compatibility, ICD-10 transition, lack of auditing software compatibility will result in higher overall costs over the product’s lifespan.
With that said, it’s important to clearly communicate to your vendor what you’re looking for in your CAC programs. If you and/or your team isn’t prepared to manually maintain key aspects of the process down the line, let your vendor know so you can receive an ICD-10 ready product.

Work With Your Consultants

Although the idea of comparative advantage and specialization has created many synergies between health care practitioners and information technology specialists, doctors will remain doctors, and computer engineers will remain computer engineers. Consultants from tech-companies won’t know the nuances of the medical field, while doctor’s can’t expect consultants to know the difference between an excision (cutting out a certain part of a body) and resection (cutting out the entire piece of a body part). Since these huge differences are reflected by small differences in coding, working with your vendor will be crucial to creating an effective product.

So when working with ICD-10 vendors, expect that they are experts in their field, but be humble enough to realize that they may not understand the nuances between how different doctors work. Keep an open line of communication, and make sure you work with your consultants step-by-step to make sure the final product is up to your expectations.