This past week the US House and Senate passed a bill H.R.4302, Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (SGR/Doc Fix) and President Obama signed the bill into law. In addition to addressing a temporary "fix" to the Medicare sustainable growth rate (SGR), a provision was added to the bill that states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cannot adopt the ICD-10 code set as the standard until at least October 1, 2015.

Optum, our PM and Physician EMR vendor, has invested heavily in preparation for ICD-10 and will remain ready and committed to supportin you this transition.

As of this morning, 4/3/2014 9:30 AM EST, CMS.gov has not posted any further news on this delay.

Since the law only prevents CMS from enforcing a mandate, many questions remain about how the delay will proceed, including:

• Is October 1, 2015, the new deadline to switch over?
• Will CMS allow providers to make the switch to ICD-10 voluntarily?
• Might the agency skip over ICD-10 altogether and skip straight to ICD-11, which is scheduled for release in 2017?

We will continue to post updates as we learn more about the ICD-10 delay.

If you have concerns, questions, or need to reach us please call (800) 372-7790 (toll free) or email geoffl@webhstech.com.

Thank you,

Geoff Lusty
Vice President
Healthcare Support Technologies, Inc.
www.webhstech.com
Email: geoffl@webhstech.com
Phone: (800) 372-7790 #23