http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/icd-10-turns-1-was-it-so-bad/427115/

R51: headache. Gearing up for the switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10 last October, many providers expected nothing but headaches. The new system increased the number of diagnostic codes from around 13,000 to about 68,000, requiring clinicians to sift through highly specified conditions — and some unusual ones, such as W61-62XD: struck by duck.

But after a year of using the ICD-10 — and the impending end of a one-year grace period that ensured providers wouldn’t be denied Medicare Part B claims as long as they used a code from the correct family — most physicians say the implementation process went better than expected.

“The fear that this was really going to impact us financially because of the potential inability to process the new codes really never transpired,” says Michael Munger, a family physician with Saint Luke’s Medical Group in Overland Park, KS, and president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

In fact, the error rate for claims tracked by the AAFP was the same this year as it was for ICD-9 — 10%. The fact that commercial insurers didn’t have the grace period bodes well for the loss of flexibilities, since doctors should be used to being more specified in their claims.