Halamka offers tools for ICD-10 implementation
Despite his belief that implementation of ICD-10 is a costly endeavor with no expected benefits, thought leader John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), CIO at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, is helping his facility move forward and posted on his blog Jan. 30 two tools to help other facilities with the project.

The first tool is the Request for Assistance BIDMC used to hire a consulting partner. “In our case, we elected to create a single unified project for the academic medical center, community hospitals, physician organization, faculty practice and owned community practice,” he wrote. “We felt that creating one project for all the stakeholders would reduce costs while eliminating redundancy and aligning resources.”

The second tool is the letter sent to all stakeholders asking them to create an inventory of the software applications and processes that incorporate ICD-9 and need to support ICD-10.

“At Beth Israel Deaconess,” he wrote, “we're moving forward, assuming that ICD-10 must be implemented by October 1, 2013. We held our kickoff meeting in June, hired external resources to create a project management office, and hired subject matter expert consultants to assist with the gap analysis, project plan and budget.

“Given a project with this many negatives, the least I can do is share everything we're implementing in the hopes that others will benefit from our experience.”

Access the tools on Halamka’s blog: Life as a Healthcare CIO.

Beth Walsh,

Editor

Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.

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