The medical world has just completely changed. Welcome to ICD-10.
Every medical procedure, diagnosis and treatment you’ve had has been coded has been the same way since 1979. That’s the same year the Sony Walkman was invented.
Imagine if you saw someone walking around with one of those…no way, right? Same goes for medical codes – a lot has changed in the past 36 years!
The World Health Organization invented the ICD system, or the International Classification of Diseases. Now you get why it’s called ICD… who wants to spit out that mouthful all the time? It’s used by pretty much every health care provider you can imagine and by insurance companies to classify health problems and record them.
The U.S. has been using ICD-9, but we’ve pretty much run out of codes! We were one of the only countries that hadn’t moved on to ICD-10. Now medical coding will be the same worldwide, so if you get sick in London your records will match when you come home. Plus ICD-10 lets coders get specific – saying you broke your right arm rather than just your arm, for example.
Check this out…right now there are about 18,000 codes. Under ICD-10, there will be 142,000! That means there’s a TON more for medical billers and coders to learn. Don’t worry, they’ve been prepping for a while now. Carrington College has been teaching its medical billing and coding students ICD-10 since January.
There’s a lot more to know about the ICD-10 switch, and we’ve got you covered.
We’re breaking down:
This change impacts everybody, whether you work in the medical field or are a patient. It’s important you know what’s going on, so keep reading!