Today, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the partial code freeze on updates to the ICD-10 and ICD-9-CM diagnosis and procedure codes will continue until October 1, 2015. Regular updates to ICD-10 will begin on October 1, 2016, one year after the newly announced compliance date. According to the official statement, “the ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee will continue to meet twice a year during the partial freeze. At these meetings, the public will be asked to comment on whether or not requests for new diagnosis or procedure codes should be created based on the criteria of the need to capture a new technology or disease. Any code requests that do not meet the criteria will be evaluated for implementation within ICD-10 on and after October 1, 2016 once the partial freeze has ended.”
CMS expects to release an interim final rule soon specifying a new ICD-10 compliance date of October 1, 2015 including the 2015 General Equivalence Mappings (GEMS) used to crosswalk between ICD-9 and 10.
