ICD-10 has been regularly stealing healthcare headlines for about two years and intermittently for years prior. Before that, the news centered around electronic health records, 5010 and meaningful use, of course. As an industry we’ve moved beyond each of those, except for the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), a medical classification list by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The relevancy of the conversion from the ninth iteration is based on the impending deadline, set for Oct. 1. Previous ICD-10 deadlines have been postponed, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and other federal agencies seem to be focused on sticking to this particular ICD-10 implementation deadline.

Even with the deadline approaching, physicians and providers are not close to ready or willing to make the transition to the new medical coding set just yet, or so says the results of a new survey conducted by NueMD.

The practice management and electronic health record provider for ambulatory practices surveyed 1,000 practices, billing companies and others serving the healthcare industry, primarily from small and medium-sized medical practices. The survey aimed to gauge the overall level of stress introduced by the upcoming transition, to learn about areas of concern and to get a sense of preparedness in general.

According to the research, many small medical practices are ready to completely move over to the ICD-10 coding system in time. Perhaps most surprising is that 30 percent of respondents argued that there should be no transition to ICD-10 whatsoever. Twenty-six percent want the deadline pushed back, and 27 percent said they're OK with things as is. Mirroring these sentiments is that 26 percent of respondents said they are highly concerned about the ICD-10 transition.

Overall, 35 percent of respondents said they were "not at all confident" that their staff will be ready for the ICD-10 transition. Really, there's no surprise here, especially given the seemingly constant push for delays. Only 13 percent of practice professionals said they are "highly confident" their organization will be equipped to transition to the new coding set.

Of the areas showing the most concern, respondents were most worried about claims processing, with 65.1 percent saying they are either "highly" or "significantly" concerned; they also reported a high level of concern for training/education and payer testing. Seventy percent of those polled said they feel that their finances and operations will be at least "somewhat" negatively affected after the ICD-10 implementation deadline.

When asked how confident they are that their employees will be trained by the deadline, the most common response was, "Not at all confident." Only 11.4 percent said they're "highly confident."

To summarize the overall sentiment of the transition to ICD-10, respondents feel the conversion as a whole should be off the table.