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Those are ICD codes, which are not the same as billing codes. ICD represent diagnoses, not services rendered. ICD codes also are somewhat procedural in their g

Those are ICD codes, which are not the same as billing codes. ICD represent diagnoses, not services rendered. ICD codes also are somewhat procedural in their generation - that is, there's a whole grammar to how they're formed. For example, you'll have something like "contact with", then a whole number of different animals, and then each of those will have three different varieties (initial encounter, subsequent encounter, sequela). So it does end up with very funny lists, like the one you posted, but: (a) most of those codes are never used, and (b) just because it's assigned just means that it's a "grammatically valid" combination, not that it has any particular clinical relevance. The goal is to assign granular and hierarchical codes at the outset, to allow for more robust analysis later, at least in theory. But again, all of that is irrelevant to billing, because while ICD codes are typically submitted along with the billing info (along with a whole other slew of data), ICD codes are not the actual code that's billed - there's a whole separate list of codes used for billing.

marcus0x62 3y ago
That's really interesting, because I had a customer that did nothing but provide medical billing services, and about 15 years ago when the industry was moving from ICD-9 to ICD-10, that customer seemed really focused on their billing coders learning ICD-10.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > That's really interesting, because I had a customer that did nothing but provide medical billing services, and about 15 years ago when the industry was moving from ICD-9 to ICD-10, that customer seemed really focused on their billing coders learning ICD-10. I mean, sure? You can't bill for a service without a diagnosis code that justifies the service. Anyone who does medical billing is going to need to be able to format that data. But ICD codes are not the codes that insurers are billed for - billing codes are completely separate and not even determined by the same party.
- baishtar 3y ago
  That's to ensure that the service provided (procedure code) matches the diagnosis. For example, the procedure (HCPCS) code "71045" corresponds with the procedure "RADIOLOGIC EXAMINATION, CHEST; SINGLE VIEW" for billing purposes. If you were to match that up with the diagnosis code (ICD10) S80.211 for "Abrasion, right knee" there would be a mismatch between the diagnosis and the procedure. This happens all the time due to human error and often results in insurance denials, which sadly take a long time to fix since now you have to get MORE HUMANS involved.

marcus0x62 3y ago

That's really interesting, because I had a customer that did nothing but provide medical billing services, and about 15 years ago when the industry was moving from ICD-9 to ICD-10, that customer seemed really focused on their billing coders learning ICD-10.

chimeracoder 3y ago
> That's really interesting, because I had a customer that did nothing but provide medical billing services, and about 15 years ago when the industry was moving from ICD-9 to ICD-10, that customer seemed really focused on their billing coders learning ICD-10. I mean, sure? You can't bill for a service without a diagnosis code that justifies the service. Anyone who does medical billing is going to need to be able to format that data. But ICD codes are not the codes that insurers are billed for - billing codes are completely separate and not even determined by the same party.
baishtar 3y ago
That's to ensure that the service provided (procedure code) matches the diagnosis. For example, the procedure (HCPCS) code "71045" corresponds with the procedure "RADIOLOGIC EXAMINATION, CHEST; SINGLE VIEW" for billing purposes. If you were to match that up with the diagnosis code (ICD10) S80.211 for "Abrasion, right knee" there would be a mismatch between the diagnosis and the procedure. This happens all the time due to human error and often results in insurance denials, which sadly take a long time to fix since now you have to get MORE HUMANS involved.