Another dragon is slinking away, although it isn’t yet slain.  On February 15, 2012, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius announced that “HHS will initiate a process to postpone the date by which certain health care entities have to comply with International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition diagnosis and procedure codes (ICD-10).” In other words, medical practices no longer need to ensure that they will be ready for ICD-10 by October 2013. The press release noted that the final regulation adopting ICD-10 as a standard was published in January 2009, and that it set a compliance date of October 1, 2013 (itself a delay of two years from the compliance date initially specified in the 2008 proposed rule).  HHS has not given any hint regarding a new compliance deadline.  ICD-10 is a set of codes used to identify and describe diagnoses (ICD-10-CM) and procedures (ICD-10-PCS), replacing ICD-9. It will...