So, our ICD10 effort isn’t entirely going as planned. I suspect that is the case for nearly every complex health system.

We started our effort by surveying our key IT partners (vendors). The surveys asked a lot of question but the key information we wanted to ascertain was Which version of your application can we count on being ICD10 ready?

I believe the vendors were responding with the best knowledge they had at the time. But, their responses are proving to be incorrect. As we tested the supposed ICD10-ready versions of the applications we found bugs that had to be fixed. Many of these fixes are requiring a later version of the software. The unplanned upgrades are adding months and thousands of hours to our ICD10 plans.

While the ICD10 transition date is over a year away, I am feeling a lot of pressure. When we sequence the tasks that need to be completed we are running out of slack.