Wednesday, May 4, 2016

What versions of the ICD are currently in use?

ICD-10, the most recent iteration of the coding system, is used throughout the world; more than 100 countries use it for reporting deaths, and about two dozen also use ICD-10 codes for reimbursement and resource allocation. Its earliest adopters include the Nordic countries, which began a four-year ICD-10 implementation in 1994, and the United Kingdom, which began using the standard in 1995. ICD-10 contains 22 chapters, each of which defines a different set of conditions or diseases.

Providers in the United States use ICD-10 to report mortality data, but still use ICD-9-CM to report morbidity data and to complete Medicare and Medicaid claims. Neither ICD-10-CM nor ICD-10-PCS is currently in use, nor will they be used before Oct. 1, 2014.

Not surprisingly, ICD-9 is outdated. According to the CMS history of ICD-9-CM, the existing standard is rigid, inexact and not descriptive enough, in addition to being obsolete. For example, codes for a combination defibrillator-pacemaker device do not appear in the cardiovascular chapter of ICD-9-CM, which includes codes for defibrillator and pacemaker devices separately. In addition, as the American Medical Association (AMA) pointed out, chapters pertaining to complex body systems filled quickly, meaning that new codes for cardiac systems were assigned to the chapter initially reserved for the eye.