Check out AHIMA’s implementation preparation checklist

There are a number of ICD-10 checklists floating around out there in cyberspace, but this one created by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and included in a recent CMS presentation is one of the best ones I’ve seen. The AHIMA suggests the following checklist when performing an ICD-10  impact assessment:

• Establish interdisciplinary steering committee to oversee implementation
• Educate affected departments and individuals about the change in code sets and what it meansfor their area of responsibility (both in terms of
• preparation planning and benefits)
• Assess organizational readiness for the change to the ICD-10 code set
• Assess impact of change on organizational operations
• Assess staff education needs
• Identify reports and forms requiring modification (e.g., physician practice superbill)
• Assess extent of changes to systems, processes, policies/procedures
• Use code set change as opportunity to improve data flow, work flows, and processes
• Perform comprehensive systems audit for ICD-10 compatibility
• Determine vendor readiness and timeline for upgrading software to new code sets
• Assess quality of medical record documentation and implement documentation improvement program if necessary
• Develop implementation budget

But it’s good to look at this checklist as a skeleton upon which to build your own impact assessment because it’s easy to see how each one of these bullets could have its own subset of smaller checklists. Do you have a checklist you would like to share? Post a comment, your checklist, or the Web link to the checklist so we can all take a look!