3 ms·

Ok, so it's _broken_. As a system of recording stuff is it also ... incoherent? Slapping on a bandaid or giving someone tylenol are _services_. "Bitten by duck"

• adolph 3y ago
  Yes, the cause or problem is needed as well as the procedure or treatment that was delivered to treat the problem. The treatment will be charged separately for professional (like MDs) and technical (like nurse, pharmacy). It also matters who is performing a procedure. An MD slapping the bandaid charges more than a PA, Nurse Practitioner or PharmD. https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10PCS/Codes https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10PCS/Codes
• skissane 3y ago
  > Ok, so it's _broken_. As a system of recording stuff is it also ... incoherent? Slapping on a bandaid or giving someone tylenol are _services_. "Bitten by duck" is a _cause_, and different people bitten by ducks could need different services, and people impacted by different causes could need the same services. As others have explained, these are diagnosis codes; there are also procedure codes. Procedure codes are the primary thing billed for, the diagnosis code is just to justify the procedure - some doctors will perform (or falsely claim to have performed) medically irrelevant procedures as a form of billing fraud, and cross-checking the procedure and diagnosis is meant to prevent that. And the reason why there are so many diagnosis codes, is because their primary purpose is public health statistics not insurance billing; and ICD codes are global (although the US also adds its own US-specific ones.) Probably, somewhere in the world, some bureaucrat is tracking the public health cost of animal attacks by species, and those species-specific animal attack codes exist to enable them to do that.