ICD-10 Codes

NEW ICD -10 MEDICAL CODING
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Currently, the United States of America’s health community is shifting to new codes referred to as ICD-10. Medical illnesses, symptoms, and complications are coded by a specialized coder in certain institutions. Physicians, nurses, and physician’s assistants code different illnesses in different health organizations. Specialized trained coders (although this is not a universal policy) are used to code these illnesses (Dalgleish, 2013). This paper discusses possible causes of problems of these particular coding techniques.
Although physicians are informed and sensitized about coding, their commitment is questionable. Many organizations lack skilled coders for this specific type of coding. This leads to aberration in coding due to lack of skilled hands. Hence, at the end of coding many things go amiss. Physicians, nurses, and nurse assistants use electronic health records (EHR) to select codes representing patient treatment and management (American Medical Association, 2015). This is a way to manage the burden of an increased work load. In these organizations, certain factors may cause problems or delays in the coding process;
1. Nonspecific medical coding.
Nurses, medical laboratory specialists, and physicians’ assistants refer to the physicians’ desk for specified medical codes especially where the diagnosis might affect payment of a patient’s hospital bills. For instance, if a patient is suffering from an unspecified gastric ulcer disease, coders would want to know the specific stage and extent of the disease in order to produce a code for a specific diagnosis .The hospitals’ accounts departments require a specific diagnosis in order to bill patients (American Medical Association, 2015). However, decisions are made after extensive consultations with the physicians’ desk and consultative forums. Consequently, this process is time consuming and leads to delays in generating a code. Physicians complain about increased workloads and unspecified codes. As a result work done per day reduces in an organization. The consultative process t...