ICD-10-CM/PCS Coding Maintenance Operational Guidance 

 In January 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published its final rule on the conversion of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standard medical data code set from International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) to International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) and Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS). This conversion requirement will take effect October 1, 2013. NQF is taking steps through the Code Maintenance project described in this report to examine the implications for the organization’s measure maintenance procedures and understand the impact of code transitions for the measurement community, particularly measure developers, as we begin to shape our processes to accommodate the necessary measure updates. As such, any measures previously endorsed by NQF containing ICD-9-CM codes in the specifications will need to be updated to incorporate ICD-10-CM/PCS codes. Therefore, the goal of the NQF Code Maintenance Project is to facilitate the transition of NQF-endorsed® measures using ICD-9-CM codes to ICD-10-CM/PCS diagnosis and procedure code equivalents prior to the slated October 2013 implementation of the HIPAA standard code set conversion.