CMS: PQRS penalties are suspended because of ICD-10 updates

The ICD-10 has been recently updated and the codes are new to the report system for physicians. Since it is a new report system physicians will not have negative impacts for wrong codes. The 2017 and 2018 ICD-10 codes are updated recently and the physicians’ payment system for the upcoming year will not get affected. The new updates are taking the PQRS to a new level without any issues.

The updations of ICD-10 codes

The ICD-10 codes are updated for the year and physicians who are reporting on the fourth quarter of the year need not worry about negatives. The errors which are made by the physicians lead to negative payments and because of the negative payments there are decrements in hikes which disturbs the financial cycle of the physicians. Apart from physicians, the people who are working in the medical industry are getting same suspension just because of updation.

Number of codes

Nearly 5000 codes are updated in the ICD-10 codes which helps people to set up a new platform for coding. The codes are of high level and it is not such an easy thing for physicians to understand the coding in a short span of time. Keeping all these things in mind, the ICD-10 coding errors will not be calculated for the reports which are taken for 2017 years. It is a wanted change which was expected by many physicians and other workers who are working for the development of medical industry.

CMS has announced this suspension of negative impacts which makes the announcement official for people. People who are working in the medical industry can work without stress because any minor or major errors which are happing in PQRS will not be considered for payments. It is really a glad option for people regarding the suspension of errors on reports.

Even professional people who are completely dealing with codes are also facing some of the issues with newly updated codes. If the codes which are updated for remains within 100 to 500 changes can be tackled but the codes are changed beyond 5000 which makes the coding so different even for professional people. The suspension is more a boon for people who are currently dealing with codes of the ICD-10. The earlier version of ICD-9 was easy to work but there was no completion in codes and many denials happened because of improper codes. To clear the denials, ICD-10 an advanced coding platform was introduced which stands as a support for people.

The new announcement of suppressing the errors in the PQRS is really a worthy program which is tending to service many people in a short span of time. The ICD-10 codes will surely come into regular practice and work in effective ways for the medical industry. CMS has given medical industry just some time for getting developed in the codes and when experts are ready to deal with it then reporting system will be back to normal in a short span of time.