Is the industry ready for ICD-10 implementation?

ICD is needed to regulate codes for the medical conditions and the procedures. While many nations around the world currently using the ICD-10, the USA has yet to embrace this established practice. As ICD-10 codes are much more precise compared to ICD-9, physicians can certainly fetch even more information, it simply means that they can better learn about crucial details regarding the patient’s health as compared to ICD-9-CM. Somewhere around 660 providers along with billing companies presented about 15,000 test claims. The effective testing consistently put on track for the effective implementation of the significant step that better demonstrates the modern practice of medicine by 1st of October 2015. Healthcare professionals use codes with the ICD in order to record the health conditions of their patients and also record in-patient hospital procedures.

The USA is the only major industrialized country yet to move to ICD-10. The system of ICD-9, that is over 35 years old, restricts a number of new codes which can be created, and several ICD-9 categories are full. Providers of ICD-10 room for the code expansion, so that providers could use codes even more accurately towards patient diagnoses. While the ICD-10 date for implementation draws near, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is expects the industry is ready for the major changes that it's going to experience because of the new coding system. It is very important that the providers are working with the resources available and also are providing required training to their staffs in order to successfully get the transition. When they are not prepared, their practices are going to be negatively affected while processing and filing claims.

In order to have health professionals updated on the time that they have prior to October 1, the CMS has started with a countdown on their website. Providers and the payers are left with a couple of months before they must change to the ICD-10 codes. Professionals in healthcare may already know the numbers of days exactly remaining to the deadline, however, many are still not as ready as they ought to be to ensure a smooth transition. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has offered many online resources such as the Road to 10 guides. Having said that, a current survey done by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) indicated that just 25% of providers are ready, which indicates that such resources have perhaps turned out to be unhelpful or maybe haven't been used as much as they should.

Healthcare industry is starting to show concern since the implementation date gets closer, as per a study by CNBC. Small practices particularly are increasingly becoming concerned. EHR Intelligence pointed out that though there is presently so much fear growing within the healthcare industry, providers need to target on the good aspects about the new coding system that offers. For instance, it's going to enhance diagnostic codes and remove the ones that are not relevant, finally improving the entire care standard. To less than 3 months left before the state changes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 coding, CMS and the American Medical Association (AMA) declared more efforts in helping physicians to get prepared before the October 1 deadline. CMS is offering more assistance that will provide freedom in the claims auditing as well as quality reporting process since the medical community gets experience with the new ICD- 10 code set.

It is undeniable that the transitioning from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will certainly increase the number of codes from 17,000 to 140,000. This clear growth draws attentions to necessity for the providers to effectively train their practice, and it also indicates the way this new detailed data will be helpful to the physicians while effectively diagnosing their patients. As stated in the Journal of AHIMA, providers and the payers shouldn't expect for yet another ICD-10 delay, as the United States House of Representatives have recently passed the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) bill on a vote of 392 to 37 while not stating anything regarding a delay.

Realizing that providers of health care need help in the transition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the American Medical Association are trying to make certain that the physicians along with other providers are prepared prior to the transition to ICD-10 which will occur on October 1. Contacting the providers of health care all over the nation, both CMS and AMA will train providers through on-site training, educational articles, webinars and national provider calls that will help doctors along with other healthcare providers find out about the updated codes as well as get ready for the transition.

At Mindfire Solutions, we have been providing custom healthcare application development services to our esteemed clients for more than 11 years now. Our healthcare team can help you migrate from ICD 9 to ICD 10. Please feel free to write to us in case of any custom healthcare needs and we will revert back in one business day.

10 things to consider before developing your healthcare software

Data security: While developing health care software it is the primary concern for the developer to keep the data secure in the database. For the same, you can implement high degree of security in the back end programming to make the data extremely safe and secure for your client. Software developers can implement 256 bit encryption technology to keep the data extremely secure.

Data consistency: Health care software is usually aimed to serve a big organisation like hospital or medical in which there are lots of infrastructural and divisional differences in the organisation. To provide a common information data all around the divisions and infrastructures it is necessary to maintain the data consistency so that any bills can be generated from anywhere without any differences.

Data isolation: Many times we need to keep our data isolated from the rest of the world. This improves the quality of service as well as helps in maintaining privacy of our users. So a software developer must ensure the same through his application.

Proper flow: While developing any software application, it is the duty of the software developer to maintain a proper flow among the modules. If you are developing a web application then also you need to follow a certain approach. This flow is extremely vital for the success of the application and it must be taken care from the very beginning of the development process.

Credential is must: While dealing with health care application we usually find many stages of users for the application like admin, HOD, Chief data entry operator etc. In that situation, we must maintain a proper screening among the departments. For the same we should integrate credential system into the application so that there will be no data leakage in the application.

Database should be optimized: As a good software developer, you must ensure all your database related queries are not only optimized but also efficiently handled. We should avoid duplicate queries to improve the throughput of the application.

Added feature is a big plus: In 21^st century, we are in a competitive environment and hence, to sustain in the market, we have to provide some additional features in our application. For the same, we can analyse the strength of our competitors and accordingly we should prepare a better battle to lunch our application with added features.

Integration of SMS service is better: SMS service is a boon for 21^st century industry and we must take the advantage of the same for our application. With SMS integration, we can connect with more number of users and able to provide them better services than before. On the other hand, users will feel privileged too.

Integration of health devices: There are many heath devices that are in the news recently like apple’s watch or android watch. If we can integrate these devices to our application, then we can help our users more practically in providing better and in-time services.

Instant support matters: Yes, this matters a lot!! If through our application, we can provide instant support to any user, then it will definitely get more popularity and faith of the users in low time. So we must take care for the same.

For the last 10+ years Mindfire solutions has been highly successful in developing secure, easy-to-use and robust Healthcare Software Solutions. Our strong software engineering capability coupled by an in-depth understanding of the healthcare industry has enabled us to build solutions which are interoperable and comply with all the required regulatory mandates (e.g. MU, ICD-10, etc.). If you are planning to hire a healthcare software development company for your healthcare projects, please contact Mindfire solutions.

mHealth and its importance in future

mHealth a modern era futuristic way to provide industry standard health services to each and everyone. It is affordable yet effective!! If we say, “mHealth is the messenger of God”, probably we are not mistaking!!

Health is wealth and we should careful for our health. For better health we have to rely on better health care services. mHealth is a modern era health care services provided to the patients through mobile devices like mobiles, smart phones, tablets etc. In fact m stands for mobile. The aim of mHealth is to provide better and in time health services to the patients from a remote place. It has already received a fabulous response in developed countries in past few years and experts believe that it will get similar response in developing countries like India, China etc in recent future. Let us discuss some of the important aspect of mHealth for the users.

For educating people for their health: In developing country like India the major part of the population live in villages where there is very less scope to educate people for different diseases and health tips. As a result, due to unawareness, people live like blind and socially illiterate in remote places. With mHealth service we can educate them through different health tips in the form of SMS service to their mobile. We can make them aware of new diseases, threads and epidemics in advance so that they can take preventive measures for their health.

Training for healthcare professionals from a remote place: Though India a country of 1.3 billion populations, still there is an unbelievable number of health care service providers or professionals in the country. The ratio between the health care professional to that of patients is extremely low. To add this they are neither up to date nor highly qualified. As a result the health care service is becoming terrific with time. To avoid this, mHealth can be used to train the health care professionals with modern approach to make them more efficient than before. It can be done from any remote place on the globe and from qualified and expert professionals. This will definitely improve the quality of service to the patients in indirect way.

Reaching at everyone: Mobiles are now with every hands in India irrespective of geographic changes. To get the maximum advantage of this situation we must ensure that the mHealth service is reaching to each and every corner of the country. This will definitely help poor peoples to avail better health care service through mHealth technology.

Providing better patient service: Through mHealth we can perform different operations like collecting patient information, taking an appointment for a doctor, providing tele medicines etc. This will definitely improve the quality of health care service in the country. On the other hand patient will get immediate service from a remote place that can save a life. Moreover doctors can monitor their patients from a remote place and hence able to provide better and advanced service to them.

Emergency assistance: Emergency situations like epidemic, outbreak or accidental case, mHealth can help you in a superfast way so that you may think as if it is a blessing from god. So if we say mHealth is a virtual version of messenger of god, it will not be an over statement.

You can hire developers from healthcare IT development companies in India who can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide Medical Software Development services. If you want to hire healthcare software developers for developing your medical application, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.