In October 2015, the medical world changed forever when the International classification of diseases 10 was adopted by the entire global community.
ICDs date back to the 1900s. At the time, medical industry united to adopt a uniform code regarding illnesses and statistics – it was a sort of a medical bible. When the WHO was formed around the middle of the century, it took the ownership of ICD as well. The biggest advantage of the ICD is that it allows uniformity across the globe and enables people of this industry to compare data and statistics as well as other relevant information.
The ICD-9 is basically used for the purpose of coding and classifying death certificates till 1999 until the job was taken up by the ICD-10. There are many other ways the two are different. The ICD-9 assigned codes to medical procedures and these codes consisted of 5 digits. On the contrary, ICD-10 consists of 7 characters. The latter also contains far more diagnosis; namely 68000 which is a far greater number than ICD-9’s diagnosis which barely amounted to around 13000. According to American Hospital Association, the ICDs are an excellent way to embed and disseminate information. The system works great for transmitting information regarding diagnosis history as well as patient conditions and history of treatments. The ICDs are also beneficial when information regarding health plans needs to be communicated.
With the changes in times and advancement of information as well as medical technology, the ICDs ran into some troubles and were sometimes criticized, especially with respect to their role in the processing of insurance claims. On the other hand, the ICD-10 has a number of benefits such as:
- Complete, highly accurate
- Allows a healthcare provider to properly document the issues related to identifying the disease
- Cost analysis is made really easy thus saving costs and being an efficient option
- It allows dissemination of information and makes it easier for healthcare providers all over the world to act in cohesion for advancement of medical technology.
The ICD 10 provides users with far more information which is also much more complete and comprehensive. It helps with a number of areas such as:
- Providing information regarding reimbursements
- Reduced costs
- Analysis and evaluation of healthcare quality
- Monitoring of resources and ensuring efficient utilization
The Impact
First of all, the ICD-10 will make the doctors’ and nurses’ job more time consuming. Due to its comprehensive nature, the ICD -10 requires far more information in order to provide the most accurate output. This requires careful documentation on part of professionals such as doctors and nurses. Many even feel that this additional duty is taking away their precious time which could be spent doing things more productive as well as more effective. Not just this, but since the nature of documentation is rather complex, the doctors and nurses will have to be trained accordingly and this will add to the bill and make this adoption seem costly.
Furthermore, the administration will undoubtedly face some hiccups. Issues with the insurance industry are expected and they could really drain the commitment and energy of the administrators and at such a stage, the only thing that matters is that the administrators persevere. One can rest assured that with adequate planning in advance, and a little flexibility, the adoption will be complete without any hassle.
To understand coding and other issues relevant to the medical field, Bachelor’s in healthcare administration can prove to be an excellent option. The program equips students with important skill set that can be used in the industry to excel.