http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/admin-systems/232301063 By Neil Versel InformationWeek December 27, 2011 Many health insurers will need to upgrade their IT infrastructure in the next few years to meet coming mandates and respond to healthcare reform efforts, but cost and short timetables could be significant obstacles, a new survey reveals. In a survey of 106 leaders from healthcare payers, 35% of respondents listed cost or return on investment as their top concern with implementing new, organization-wide IT systems. Nearly a quarter participating in the poll from HealthEdge, a Burlington, Mass.-based developer of management software for the health insurance industry, said that they were most concerned with disruption to regular business flows. About 21% cited short deadlines to comply with mandates, such as the switch to ICD-10 coding by October 2013. Only 22% said they were fully prepared to support ICD-10, with remediation plans in place and system upgrades underway. About 37% indicated that they were "somewhat prepared," but not sure that they would be able to meet the deadline, while 36% were just starting to ready themselves for ICD-10. Just over 5% have not finished evaluating their IT capabilities or created a remediation plan for the new coding system. "This is not terribly surprising," HealthEdge executive VP Ray Desrochers, told InformationWeek Healthcare. "A lot of the largest payers got their act together early," Desrochers said, but noted that the tier just below the biggest insurance companies did not really start on ICD-10 until this year, even though federal officials set the deadline in January 2009. [...] _____________________________________________________ Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isnReceived on Wed Dec 28 2011 - 00:35:38 PST
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