This is what Kaiser Permanente’s CEO George Halvorson 
thinks and feels about ICD-10.
“I hate ICD-10. It drives me crazy, it adds so little value, and I can’t find any therapeutic upside”
“The upcoming deployment of ICD-10 is anathema to my organization”
“The use of ICD-10 is a response to running out of current diagnosis-related group (DRG) codes rather the a logical expansion based on clinical data”
“They’re putting the current codes into certain buckets to expand them, and they’ve run out of room”
“It is more suited to work with a paper-based medical record system”
“I am looking toward the ICD-11 iteration, in the hopes it might be better integrated with electronic health records”
“Kaiser’s rollout of an EHR system is saving about $3 billion in annual costs by making it more efficient to treat chronic conditions and combat sepsis, which kills tens of thousands of hospital patients a year”
However, communications officer Ravi Poorsina at Kaiser said Kaiser will still deploy ICD-10 since according to him, “I think we’re required to”.
Abridged from Kaiser CEO on why ICD-10 ‘drives him crazy’ by Ron Shinkman, June 26 2012, FierceHealthFinance
Note: The above remarks by Halvorson were made during a question and answer session after delivering a keynote speech at the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Annual National Institute on Monday, June 25 2012, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center in Las Vegas, USA.
