On December 22, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it had conducted another successful acknowledgement testing week last month of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems tenth revision (ICD-10). Acknowledgement testing gives providers and others the opportunity to submit claims with ICD-10 codes to the Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) claims systems and receive electronic acknowledgements confirming that their claims were accepted. While providers are welcome to submit acknowledgement test claims anytime, during the November testing week, testers submitted almost 13,700 claims.
More than 500 providers, suppliers, billing companies, and clearinghouses participated in the November testing week. Acceptance rates improved throughout the week with Friday’s acceptance rate for test claims at 87 percent. Nationally, CMS accepted 76 percent of total test claims. Testing did not identify any issues with the Medicare FFS claims systems.
To ensure a smooth transition to ICD-10, CMS verified all test claims had a valid diagnosis code that matched the date of service, a National Provider Identifier (NPI) that was valid for the submitter ID used for testing, and an ICD-10 companion qualifier code to allow for claims processing.
The next acknowledgement testing weeks are March 2-6, and June 1-5, 2015. In addition to the special testing weeks, providers can submit acknowledgement test claims anytime up to the October 1, 2015, which is the ICD-10 implementation date.
