Despite their massive scopes, ICD-10 and Meaningful Use thus far have been largely disconnected, save for a few lone voices suggesting that healthcare organizations – as well as CMS (The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) – consider the projects in lockstep. Indeed, it may prove easier and less expensive in the long-run to plot both migrations simultaneously.

With already heaping plates, though, healthcare organizations at best have started both initiatives on parallel project tracks, rather than together, if they have begun ICD-10 projects at all. As they work to achieve Meaningful Use criteria, according to CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation), ICD-10 will prove itself among the top obstacles.

[Related: Where ICD-10 fits into the top 6 health IT priorities. Podcast: The AAPC's 'ICD-10 Changes Everything' campaign.]

The technology services and solutions provider this week published a study outlining obstacles that hospitals face on the road to achieving Meaningful Use. Straight to the chase for ICD10Watch readers, CSC listed “dealing with ICD-10 at the same time” as challenge number 10.

In the report, CSC advises that “project leaders in hospitals should resist the temptation to consider this a revenue cycle project; it must be closely coordinated with work on the inpatient EHR (especially problem list and clinical documentation).”

CSC is not the first to suggest an interconnectedness between Meaningful Use and ICD-10. Renowned healthcare IT expert and dual-CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, John Halamka, MD, in fact, called for ICD-10 to be pulled into the Meaningful Use definition, and did so not long after NCVHS (The National Committee on Health and Vital Statistics), an advisory group to HHS (Health and Human Services), penned an open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suggesting ICD-10 be added to Meaningful Use invectives.

And McKinsey Quarterly in its most recent issue stated that ICD-10, alongside healthcare reform and stimulus package IT mandates, will essentially force payers to transform 90 percent of their IT architectures. 

For its part, CSC is not suggesting governmental mandate or policy changes but, rather, recommending that providers themselves approach ICD-10 as part of their EHR initiatives.

“Although ICD-10 coding is not required in Stage 1,” CSC's report notes, “in order to avoid a two-step it makes sense to consider moving to immediately to ICD1- or SNOMED mapped to ICD-10.”

CSC's article Meaningful Use for Hospitals: The Top Challenges is available on the company's Web site (as a PDF).

Editor's Note: Vote in our current reader poll, please! Which ICD-10 cost is of most concern to you? We'll report the results and what they mean on ICD10Watch.