Elucidating Challenges and Opportunities in the Transition to ICD-10-CM

Throughout the history of medicine, clinicians have worked to classify disease. As early as 1662, John Graunt studied the London Bills of Mortality to report death rates by condition.¹  Originally created for epidemiologic purposes, systems of disease terminology became useful for other purposes, including billing. Since 1979, the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision with Clinical Modifications (ICD-9-CM) has been used for third-party payment in the United States. Worldwide, the 10th revision of the ICD (ICD-10) has been used with local modifications in numerous countries for a decade or more. Now, all US entities covered by the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act will be required to use ICD-10-CM on or after October 1, 2015. ICD-10-CM has about 5 times as many codes as ICD-9-CM. It is hoped the new codes will be better aligned with current medical terminology, characterize health information that could not be described with ICD-9-CM (eg,...