Version 5010, are you ready?  If you work in the healthcare industry you should be VERY AWARE of the major changes occurring with insurance claims processing.  Due to inaccuracies in reporting information gathered from claims and incorrect payments made due to code choices, the healthcare industry will be migrating to the use of ICD-10 codes.  This means that diagnosis codes will go through a major overhaul, expanding from five (5) alpha numeric places to seven (7) alpha numeric places.  To enable our systems to recognize the new codes, especially the code lengths, and process claims electronically accordingly, the first step is to implement Version 5010.  Currently all claims processed electronically to any type of carrier uses an electronically formatting of the codes inputted known as Version 4010 (aka v. 4010).  Effective January 1, 2012, all claims are to be transmitted with Version 5010 (aka v. 5010) in preparation of the use of the ICD-10 codes in 2013.  Due to the change, carriers, software vendors and clearinghouses have been undergoing tedious amounts of testing to ensure that there are no service interruptions on the January 1, 2012 deadline.  Therefore claims using ICD-9 codes will began to be transmitted with the new v. 5010 layout.  While this has been the talk in the industry for well over a year, there are still numerous of providers or billing agencies that are not prepared for the January 1st deadline.  Based on the feedback from these entities, CMS and others have chosen to have a discretionary enforcement date of March 31, 2012.  What does this mean?  They may chose to not enforce fines for failure to begin transmitting claims in v. 5010 until March 31, 2012.  Although this does not guarantee that will be the case as the official deadline is January 1, 2012.  Another side note about the new v. 5010 is the 'billing provider address'.  Before you were allowed to use a PO Box in this field, which will no longer be permissible with v. 5010.  If you input a PO Box in this field, the claim will be denied/rejected.  Any PO Boxes must now be listed in the 'pay-to' field.  If you are processing claims electronically, which for most carriers these days is mandatory, you should have already completed testing or are at the end of testing.  Other then these two options, you will not be ready and therefore risk claims being processed efficiently which will affect your cash flow.  So I ask once again, Version 5010, are you ready???  Rill Unique Enterprises is ready.