While the changes in ICD-10 has more to offer but the challenges that exists are worth the effort. The providers and the coders too will need to comprehend the new set of codes in ICD-10, and this demands education about their practices’ coding systems.
But ultimately the benefit outweighs the damage the shift will cause, in terms of loss of time, energy and breakage in workflow.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have set October 1, 2014 as the target/deadline for the implementation of the new and quite significantly better International Classification of Diseases (ICD) set of codes to replace ICD-9 because ICD-9 is not efficient enough, a better word is the coding system is ‘obsolete’.
This is an effort by the US Government to make the coding system align with the worlds’.
ICD-10 use of combination codes. Combination codes are used to classify/categorize two diagnoses or a diagnosis with an associated secondary process with an associated complication.
An example in ICD-9 Diagnosis Codes, ICD-9 Code: 415.0, for: Acute cor pulmonale and ICD-9 Code: 415.12, for Septic pulmonary embolism while in ICD-10 Diagnosis Codes an example would be, ICD-10 Code: I26.01 Septic pulmonary embolism with acute cor pulmonale.
(American Medical Association – Fact Sheet), thus ICD-10 code with its shorter code accomplishes the task of assigning codes much efficiently. In essence, the codes are more flexible allowing the incorporation of higher level of details in the codes.
Relevance of codes. ICD-10 codes are more relevant to the emerging new medicine and the medical technologies’ which help in understanding of the new diagnoses.
