ICD-10 – How to deal with the increase in paperwork?
As with anyone, physicians and other healthcare providers see paperwork as more of a burden on them than anything else. While there is no doubt that ICD-10 is going to improve the quality and efficiency of overall healthcare delivery and administration, it is going to increase the burden of paperwork even further. I think there is an urgent need for investment to address providers’ concerns around paperwork, especially with ICD-10 due for implementation in a few years.
Investments need to be channeled towards Research and Development of new technology and towards leveraging existing technology on the healthcare industry. Speech recognition, new automated ways of converting paper to reliable electronic data and intuitive automated systems that can use historical data to reliably predict outcomes and create prescriptions, are some of the ways to reduce paperwork.
Reliability is a key requirement for technology deployed in healthcare delivery. And it takes significant amount of time and money to build reliable systems. A big portion of Obama administration’s earmarked fund for healthcare needs to go to a focused technology initiative. Inaction to address the increase in paperwork due to ICD-10 will frustrate physicians more than they already are with the current volume of paperwork – and we don’t want frustrated doctors to be treating us; do we now?
