Why ICD-10?

ICD-10—Potpourri:
General State of Readiness- How you can & should be Preparing for the Inevitable, Part 2 of 4

This article “ICD-10 Implementation: Top concerns for healthcare providers” quotes Jim Jacobs, senior vice president and product management and health information management for QuadraMed. "If you want to understand outcomes and understand the protocols that are working, the protocols that have measured benefits, then you need quite a bit of specificity."



Jacobs gives a couple of really good examples of the questions (and therefore the documentation necessary) of ICD-10 coding (this would also apply to meaningful use and why they are implementing ICD-10 codes in conjunction with the push for EHR use).

1. "It's not good enough to just say they had a broken bone. You need to talk about which bone, where and what kind of break it was. Because the protocol for a specific episode can vary with all the details."
2. "Saying someone had a heart attack doesn't really give you enough to go on. Does aspirin help? Do they need a stent? Or do they need bypass surgery?"

In order to understand what is or is not working in healthcare situation, more data is needed, hence ICD-10 and EHR implementation exist.

Additional Resources:

“ICD-10 Implementation: Top concerns for healthcare providers”  By Carl Natale at ICD10watch