Colorado Medical Society

http://dev.cms.org/articles/feds-conduct-successful-medicare-ffs-icd-10-end-to-end-testing-week/

Feds conduct successful Medicare FFS ICD-10 End-to-End Testing Week

Friday, April 17, 2015 02:33 PM

From Jan. 26 through Feb. 3, 2015, Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) health care providers, clearinghouses, and billing agencies participated in the first ICD-10 end-to-end testing week with all Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) and the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) MAC Common Electronic Data Interchange (CEDI) contractor. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports they accommodated all volunteers, which represented a broad cross-section of provider, claim, and submitter types.

“Approximately 660 providers and billing companies submitted nearly 15,000 test claims,” the agency said in a news bulletin. “This successful week of testing continues to put us on course for successful implementation of this important initiative that better reflects modern practice of medicine by Oct. 1, 2015.”

They said testing demonstrated that their systems are ready to accept ICD-10 claims. View the results here.

Overall, participants in the testing were able to successfully submit ICD-10 claims and have them processed through federal billing systems. Most rejected claims didn’t meet the mark because of errors unrelated to ICD-9 or ICD-10.

Testing allows the federal CMS to identify areas of improvement. They have pledged to work with outside entities and stakeholders to improve the small deficiencies identified and continue to do testing.

In addition to acknowledgement testing, which may be completed at any time, two more end-to-end testing weeks will be held before the Oct. 1, 2015, compliance date for ICD-10: April 27 - May 1 and July 20-24. Testers who participated in the January testing are automatically eligible to test again in April and July.

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