ICD-10 Jangles Financial Leaders' Nerves

Moreover, 25% of survey respondents expect it to take 1–2 years before they'll see a return on investment for ICD-10, while 27% of healthcare leaders responded that they didn't anticipate recouping the outlay for this initiative. Certainly sobering findings for any organization just beginning the process, and there are more than a few organizations in that boat.

With less than two years to go before the mandatory ICD-10 coding transition in October 2013, just over half (51%) of organizations have completed their initial ICD-10 readiness assessment, according to the survey.

Of those respondents that have begun the assessments, nearly 73% have completed the system/vendor readiness portion, while 64% have completed their training assessment, 57% have completed their documentation gap analysis, and 48% have completed the financial impact assessment.

Albert Oriol, lead advisor for the survey and vice president and chief information officer at Rady Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego says without the assessment, organizations cannot budget accordingly. "The cost is higher than they may think. We did our financial assessment and now we're discovering that it's double what we estimated," he said.

So what's the hold up? More pressing matters, in fact, were cited by 41% of respondents as to why they had not even completed an ICD-10 readiness assessment, while 39% said that efforts were scheduled but had not yet begun. Basically, there's too much to do and too little time, money, and manpower to do it.