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December 10, 2015
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LIFESTYLE Magazine Winter Wonderland ISSUE AVAILABLE NOW
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RESIDENTS VETO VINEYARD: Del Vino Vineyard is under scrutiny from Northport Village residents and the Northport-East
Northport Board of Education because of its location, which is directly next door to Norwood Avenue Elementary School. Above, grapes from a vineyard in Riverhead. See page A3 for full story.
Go ahead, take a bite
New system helps North Shore hospitals diagnose
Town serves up bistro rules for smaller restaurants
PAGE A7
BY VICTORIA ESPINOZA
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A view of the front entrance to Huntington Hospital on Park Avenue in Huntington.
Hospitals across the North Shore and the country have been adapting to an entirely new set of medical codes over the last two months, completely changing the system in which a patient’s diagnosis is detailed. As of October, all hospitals across the United States switched to the ICD-10 system, which allows for more than 14,000 different codes and permits the tracking of many new diagnoses. ICD-10, an international medical classification system by the World Health Organization, requires more specificity than the previous code system. Doctors at North
Shore facilities said they agreed that although it’s time-consuming and has slowed productivity, it is more beneficial to patients in the end. Dr. Michael Grosso, chairman of medicine at Huntington Hospital said these new codes should help make it easier for symptoms of various diseases to be tracked. According to Gross, preparation for the new code started two years ago with a required education program for all physicians that described what all the new codes meant. “Physicians are being called upon to provide more specificity and detail,” Grosso said in a phone interview. He described HOSPITALS continued on page A10