When we thought in 2013 that ICD-10 was going to happen in 2014 we did extensive work on getting ready for the changes. As the ICD-10 was postponed until this year, were lucky enough to be able to say "yes we are ready for ICD-10!"
Of course, there are so many layers to being ICD-10 ready. Yes we have an amazing EMR and Billing company that are linked seamlessly. This does make the transition much easier. But being a little type A personality and wanting to make sure we were the captain of our ship, we painfully went through our most commonly used diagnosis codes and then converted them into the ICD-10 format. Our practice is a very typical podiatry practice with a very nice mix of in office procedures, out-patient surgeries and of course in patient diabetic debridements and amputations.
We wanted to make this transition easy for us and our staff. Here you can see our example and the way we made this easy on our superbill:
The ICD-9 on the left hand side with the ICD-10 on the right hand side with brief description in the middle will make the transition easier for all hands involved in the billing process. As we completed the over 50 most common diagnosis that might be seen by a typical podiatrist and the most common procedure codes all on one sheet of paper we thought we were set. Then we were approached by another podiatrist who was looking for something like we had just completed. He was happy to not have to do the leg work and wanted to pay us for our time. Though it took forever to complete this task, I could not see charging him an arm and a leg(no pun intended) so we came to the agreement of $75. We gave it to him in an email in word document which he was able to adjust and edit to his liking. We gave him the disclaimer that we can not predict if insurances will change the game with some of these codes but these are these most accurate conversions with the correct side designations.
So with the same disclaimer in tow, we would like to see if anyone needs a concise complete one page superbill that you can customize by adding or subtracting codes at your leisure. If you do not have a superbill that is ICD-10 ready, ours is a very good start to making your transition with less stress. We are in no way shape or form promising that insurance companies will not try to continue make all of our lives more difficult as doctors, but that this may help your transition be smoother.
