As part of the House’s Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, which delays cuts in physician’s Medicare rates (SGR) by another year, the national implementation of the next-generation medical coding system known as ICD-10 has also been pushed out. This delay has focused intense attention on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide clarity for how hospitals, doctors, insurance companies should move forward.

The bill signed by President Obama on Tuesday prohibits CMS from enforcing any mandate to switch to the newer system until at least Oct. 1, 2015, but the act leaves CMS with many questions to answer. Among them:

• Will Oct. 1, 2015, become the new deadline?
• Will the agency allow organizations that are ready to implement ICD-10 to do so voluntarily?
• Would the agency scrap ICD-10 altogether and instead wait for ICD-11, which is due to be released in 2017?

Read the article in Modern Healthcare here.