4 ms·
So Ebola was first identified 38 years ago as a disease, but not until 2015 (in the US) will ICD-10 recognize it as a unique disease? This, despite having uniqu
by twistedpair 12y ago
So Ebola was first identified 38 years ago as a disease, but not until 2015 (in the US) will ICD-10 recognize it as a unique disease? This, despite having unique codes for the same afflictions to different areas of the body? Perhaps the coding and EMR standards body assumed that African hospitals weren't going to be upgrading soon.
- anigbrowl 12y agoNo, not until 2015 will the US require EMR systems to be using ICD-10. The ICDs are developed and promulgated by the World Health Organization, and I suspect the US has been a bit slow to join in because a) anything coming out of the United Nations is politically toxic to about a quarter of the electorate, and b) US healthcare is a patchwork of private businesses and promulgating any sort of new standard leads to endless complaints about 'government red tape' and so on. Anyone who is already using ICD-10 can code for Ebola, which is A98.4. So if you were a clinician billing the government, they're ready to accept ICD-10 coding, and I imagine most insurance companies are too. But lots of people are still stuck on ICD-9, same way many businesses were stuck on Internet Explorer 6 and windows XP for the longest time.