Ready or not! Here comes ICD-10

The International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) is a new system that is a federally mandated change affecting all payers and providers, and is expected to exceed both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Y2K in terms of costs and risks. In 2003, HIPAA named ICD-9 as the code set for supporting diagnoses and procedures in electronic administrative transactions. However, on 16 January 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services published a regulation requiring the replacement of ICD-9 with ICD-10 as of 1 October 2013. While ICD-9 and ICD-10 have a similar type of hierarchy in their structures, ICD-10 is more complex and incorporates numerous changes. Overall, ICD-10 contains more than 141 000 codes, a whopping 712% increase over the <20 000 codes in ICD-9, creating enormous complexities, confusion and expense. Published statistics illustrate that there are instances where a single ICD-9 code can map to more than 50 distinct ICD-10 codes. Also, there are multiple instances where a single ICD-10 code can map to more than one ICD-9 code. Proponents of the new ICD-10 system argue that the granularity should lead to improvements in the quality of healthcare whereas detractors of the system see the same granularity as burdensome. The estimated cost per physician is projected to range from $25 000 to $50 000.