$25 billion in ICD-10 claims already!

RelayHealth counts $25 billion in ICD-10 claims already

Firm predicts "groundswell of issues," including increased denials and rejections

By Henry Powderly

Revenue cycle firm RelayHealth said that ICD-10 claims "are flowing succesfully," to the tune of approximately $25 billion thus far. 

"Now the industry must be ready to tackle the next set of challenges: timely and correct reimbursement," said Joshua Berman, ICD-10 Lead for RelayHealth, in the announcement. Berman added that RelayHealth will be tracking closely days until final bill, an important metric that will signal just how disruptive the code change is to the industry.

According to RelayHealth's ICD10Central website, days until final bill has averages 14.8 days since the Oct. 1, but most of those claims were coded in ICD-9. There are still a few weeks until the wave of ICD-10 claims begin to be paid.

In an earlier announcement, Berman discussed what he saw on Oct. 1.

"RelayHealth saw about five million institutional claims pass through the clearinghouse. Only around 50,000, or .01 percent, of these claims were coded ICD-10.  As of October 5, the ICD-10 volume grew to approximately 4 percent  (or about one million claims) -- still a small part of the volume. The jump on professional claims (physician billing) was more significant; increasing from 1 percent to 36 percent. in the same timeframe," he said."

"We did see a one day decrease in Days to Final Bill from 14.8 to 13.6 days, which is counterintuitive to what you may expect post-ICD-10 deadline and likely due to a hard push to get to get ICD-9 claims completed."

Berman, however, said troubles with ICD-10 could be felt soon.

"As the majority of providers -- representing a majority of the healthcare dollars -- move fully to ICD-10, post-ICD-10 technical claims are released, and the time for expected remittances arrives, we continue to anticipate a groundswell of issues in getting claims out the door and an increase in denials and rejections."