Lessons Learned with ICD-10: The Canada and Australia Experience

The transition to ICD-10, the coding system that is applied around the world, will take effect in the United States in October 2013. This implementation will have a significant impact on health care organizations. Although some of the areas affected are obvious, including health information management, coding, and the revenue cycle; other implementation areas are peripheral and mysterious. Many countries have successfully performed the conversion to ICD-10. It is feasible that their health information management experience would be relevant, valuable, and informative to health care professionals for the imminent United States' conversion. Australia and Canada transitioned to ICD-10 in 2000. Their health information management experiences were researched through a literature review. Two interviews were conducted with selected health information management professionals from varied health care backgrounds using a set of questions compiled from the literature review and gathered in a collaborative effort with other health information management professionals. A summary of lessons learned was developed from interviews which included useful recommendations from the experiences of the Australia and Canada health information management professionals.