Point of View
ICD-10 and Its Impact on the Healthcare Industry Written by Stacy Swartz, RHIA, CCS, CPC Vice President of Coding for Sutherland Healthcare Solutions
On January 16, 2009, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published its final rule for the adoption of the ICD-10 code sets, created by the World Health Organization. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), an official medical classification list, is set for its tenth revision. As shown below, two alpha-numeric ICD-10 code sets will replace the outdated numeric ICD-9 code sets, as per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).
Differences Between ICD-9 and ICD-10 ICD-10 is far from a simple update to ICD-9. The structural changes throughout the entire coding system are substantial, and the increased level of complexity requires coders to be even more thoroughly trained than before.
ICD-9
ICD-10
DIAGNOSIS CODES
~13,000
~68,000
PROCEDURE CODES
~11,000
~72,000
CODE LENGTH
3 TO 5 DIGITS
3 TO 7 DIGITS
CODE FORM
NUMERIC PRIMARILY
ALPHA-NUMERIC
The ICD-10 Regulatory Timeline to Date The latest compliance date for ICD-10 has been set as October 1, 2015, according to new regulation published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on August 4, 2014. This one-year delay in the implementation of ICD-10 came from language inserted into the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, which was signed into law on April 1, 2014. The new regulation clarifies that ICD-9 will continue to be required until September 30, 2015, one day prior to the implementation of ICD-10.