Implementing ICD-10 in your practice.

ICD-10 will impact many areas of your practice, and your team should represent each of them. The size and complexity of your organization will influence which staff members you choose (and how many) for the internal implementation team, but at a minimum, it should include members from the clinical and administrative areas of the practice. It is preferable to ask a physician with budgetary authority to serve as a “champion” who communicates critical information to other clinicians. Peer-to-peer interaction can be particularly effective when communicating with clinicians. Other members of the medical staff (including nursing staff and nonphysician providers) should be included along with staff from the coding, billing and information systems departments. Larger institutions will want to ensure that staff members from benchmarking and research, clinical trials and other departments that use diagnosis-based data are on this team, too. It is helpful to identify an appropriate governance structure for the team and communicate roles and responsibilities for executive sponsors, steering committees and smaller groups with specific implementation responsibilities. Staff members are busy with other duties and projects, so consider dividing tasks and assigning them to subteams to avoid overburdening team members. Roles should be well-defined with clear accountability and the authority to make and act on decisions. Develop backup plans for each implementation and testing milestone to avert potential problems; establish completion dates and monitor progress. For example, what will your practice do if a critical vendor does not produce an upgrade by the expected date? Outline a protocol for identifying implementation issues and correcting them. Each team and subteam should also identify available internal and external tools and resources as well as additional tools and resources that will need to be purchased.