The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced an expected ICD-10 implementation deadline of October 1, 2015.  HHS plans to release an interim final rule “in the near future” that will set the deadline and require HIPAA-covered entities to continuing using ICD-9-CM through September 30, 2015.

As we discussed in a recent post, Congress legislatively extended the deadline for ICD-10 compliance, but did not specify an exact date for implementation.

Given the new deadline, HHS has said that it will cancel the testing program that was scheduled for late July 2014.  The agency indicated that additional testing will occur in 2015.