Change is constant, especially in the medical field; the latest being the implementation of ICD-10 in the US. ICD is a system of diagnostic codes (more than 69,000 codes) for reporting diseases, identifying global health trends, and collecting statistics globally. The procedure codes in ICD-10 count up to 72,000 codes.
Better data paves for improved patient care. Hence, with the change from ICD-9 to ICD-10, many physicians feel that they will be able to capture each detail of the patient during each visit leading to better coordination and treatment. This is chiefly due to better documentation, collection, and evaluation of the patient details. A patient and doctor relation would be better also due to improved care for acutely ill patients and tracking of their illnesses, thereby ensuring patient supervision and safety. Due to ICD-10, patients will be able to receive payments from government payers and private insurers.
The patients will also be charged less for unnecessary procedures. ICD-10 aims at helping physicians code with accuracy and the ability to understand surgical outcomes. This will lead to better communication between physicians, hospitals, emergency rooms, and specialists thereby enhancing the patient-doctor relation. Most importantly, ICD-10 will in totality reduce the rejected claims and ensure accurate claims thereby giving millions of Americans easier access to health insurance.
According to Maggie Gaglione, M.D., Internal Medicine, and Bariatrics “ICD-9 may have been adequate for the past environment, but that’s not the environment of the future.ICD-10 is needed to help us paint the picture of the population we are managing in the future payment models. ICD-10 will also allow other physicians and physician extenders to see what took place in the visit.” (roadto10.org).
To aid physicians with the utmost quality of their patients, ICD-10 intends to improve specificity, prevent fraud, augment public tracking, provide an allowance for detailed reports on accidents, and work flawlessly with Human Resource systems. ICD-10 has been lengthened to include the granular details related to diagnosis and treatment thereby giving greater care and protection to a patient.
As physicians are gradually given vital support at the hospital level with the new system of ICD-10, it will be much easier for them to protect, control, and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship; and strive to work towards quality care goals.