Katie Carolan, director of operations at Baltimore-based Health Record Services (HRS), spends a lot of time giving presentations at state American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) shows and talking to her own clients about the looming switch to ICD-10. How prepared are people to meet the October 2013 deadline?
“They’re not,” she says.
Speaking with Healthcare IT News in Sept. during AHIMA’s Annual Convention & Exhibit in Orlando, Carolan says she usually tries to stimulate discussion, asking audiences who’s gotten started and what they’ve accomplished so far. If there are 100 or so people there, seldom are more than two or three hands raised, she says. And “the farthest along anybody really is, that I’ve heard, is that they put a team together.”
So what’s the answer?