Importance of Coding

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The Importance of Coding Coding is an extremely important part of the medical field. Physicians provide services to patients and need to be paid for the services that they provide. In addition to medical reimbursement, coding is used for planning and research. Health investigators use codes to track and monitor incidences of diseases and injuries. Administrators of hospitals and other medical facilities use these factors to see if the facility is effectively meeting the needs of the community. ICD-10 and ICD-9 What is the Difference? ICD-10 is a revised version of ICD-9 that has been reversed so that it is more specific than ICD-9. For example, in ICD-9 if a patient presents to the hospital with a burn on the left arm and then two weeks later presents to the hospital with a burn on the right arm by the ICD-9 codes there is no way of telling the difference between the two burns because they are coded the same. This is apparent in the difference in the number of available diagnostic codes between the two (ICD-9: approx. 13,000 codes and ICD-10: approx. 68,000 codes). Another difference between the two is that some of the chapters in ICD-9 are full and impede the ability to add new codes and this has resulted in new codes to be assigned to different chapters and this makes it more difficult to locate all available codes. Another issue that the ICD-10 revision addresses is the use of full codes and titles and appropriately reflecting advances in medical knowledge and technology. The ICD-10 diagnosis code set also expands on the use of combination codes. For example: ICD-9 code for Acute cor pulmonale (415.0) and Septic pulmonary embolism (415.12) while in ICD-10 code is simplified into only one code that is Septic pulmonary embolism with acute cor pulmonale (I26.01). The CPT and HCPCS codes will also be more specific as ICD-9 has approx. 3,000 codes while ICD-10

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