With ICD-10 There Are Now 70,000 Ways to Classify Ailments

Back around the end of September I read an article on the Wall Street Journal website, and it came to mind again the other day. It was very informative – and I thought it was worth mentioning in our blog.

Doctors, insurers and hospitals prepared themselves for business disruptions on Oct. 1 when ICD-10 was introduced, with a massive new set of codes added.

Here are some changes:
– Cardiologists will have over 800 codes for describing angioplasty.
– Dermatologists will have 8 different types of acne.
– Gastroenterologist’s who aren’t sure what’s causing a stomach ache will have to specify where the pain is located because everything has a separate code.
– Differentiation between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
– Separation of Ebola from the general “other infectious diseases” category.
– Different codes for ailments depending on circumstances, such as whether respiratory diseases are due to tobacco use and or if obesity is due to consuming excess calories some other reason.

All in all, the number of medical codes increased from 14,000 to 70,000 with implementation of ICD-10.

For your reference (and further reading) I will link you to the original article I read on the Wall Street Journal website. You can read the full article here. Also please don’t hesitate to give us a call if you’re are thinking about outsourcing your medical billing and coding – you can also register for a free live demo here.