American Medical Association Refuses to Bend on Demand to Abandon ICD-10

The American Medical Association has now turned to Congress to halt the requirement that healthcare providers migrate to ICD-10 on Oct. 1, 2014.

Citing high implementation costs and coinciding federal mandates, the American Medical Association has urged  to stop the switch to the new diagnosis coding sets known as ICD-10.

ICD-10 offers no direct benefit to patient care, wrote AMA CEO James L. Madara in a Jan. 17 letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R, Ohio). Madara repeated earlier claims that the switch to ICD-10 will be burdensome to physicians.

“Stopping the implementation of ICD-10, and calling on appropriate stakeholders including physicians, hospitals, payers, national and state medical and informatics associations, to assess an appropriate replacement for ICD-9 will help to keep adoption of EMRs and physician participation in quality and health IT programs on track and reduce costly burdens on physician practices,” Dr. Madara wrote.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the primary driver in the federal government behind ICD-10, has stood firm on the decision to implement the new code set.