Compare ICD-9 to ICD-10 - Assignment Example

Comparison between ICD-9 and ICD-10 Comparison between ICD-9 and ICD-10 Any medical billing professional has a duty to comprehend the differences and similarities between ICD-9 and ICD-10. In simple words, ICD-9 represents the old way of coding, whereas ICD-10 is the latest classification coding system. In terms of their volumes, ICD-9 has approximately four thousand procedural codes and just more than fourteen diagnosis codes. In comparison, ICD-10 has more than 72,000 procedural codes and a volume of above 68,000 diagnosis codes.

The mode of arrangement also differ greatly, where the old edition has a number of its chapters fully arranged, making it difficult to add new codes. There are instances where new codes have been allocated to different chapters, a factor that hinders location of all available codes. In contrast, the new edition is arranged in such a manner that character length is increased, which highly extends the quantity of available codes (Lazakidou, 2006). Its structure, flexibility, and capacity are up-to-date to capture the medical experience and technological advances.

The content conveyed by the two codes is dissimilar. ICD-9 codes contain at least 3-5 digits that begin with either a letter or a number. ICD-10 codes comprise of seven digits.Some similarities can be identified in the two systems. Their organization tends to match, where both use a decimal after three characters. This means that anyone who is able to code ICD-9-CM qualifies to make a transition coding to ICD-10-CM. According to Lazakidou, the rules, conventions, and guidelines are also alike.

The first three digits match with the ICD-9 code, with the third digit being followed by a decimal point. However, the digits after the decimal have a particular meaning. For instance, in surgical and medical guidelines, the digits that come later are specific to a surgical approach, body part, and other requirements for billing. Correspondingly, the ICD-10 codes follow suit with seven digits to represent diagnosis codes.The transition procedure from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will entail a conversion based on a forward and backward GEMs map offered by the CMS.

There will be a process with one cluster being converted at a time to safeguard the clinical aim of the classification. Alternatively, codes may be transited through using consistent probability distribution, and the converted data be audited to validate the process (Lazakidou, 2006). ICD-9 and ICD-10 differ in sequencing, depending on the circumstances surrounding the encounter. For instance, it is notable that ICD-10 sequencing instructions for anemia linked to malignancy are different from those of ICD-9.

It states that when an encounter is for anemic management associated with malignancy, yet the prescription is solely for anemia, its suitable code is sequenced as the major diagnosis after code D63.0. In contrast, the anemia code in ICD-9 would be sequenced as the key diagnosis, and then the suitable code for the malignancy comes later.ReferenceLazakidou, A. (2006). Handbook of Research on Informatics in Healthcare & Biomedicine. New York, NY: Idea Group Inc (IGI).