International Classification of Diseases-10 (ICD-10) is the standard for the system of codes used to identify and classify every disease or health problem in the world. It has been over four decades since the last ICD code release. With ICD-10, the medical coding will enter a new phase and offer several new benefits to the medical industry. ICD-10 will offer a unique platform for clinical data that any physician or healthcare professional can use for documentation and analyze the patients. It will lead to better coordination and healthcare, along with the benefits mentioned below.
Better and fair payments
With the ICD-10 system, healthcare professionals can categorize a patient’s problem into a more specified category. ICD-10 is more calculative and well categorized. It can help differentiate between patients with chronic problems and those who come for regular checkups. This will help the customers by offering them a fair charge for the treatment provided to them. ICD-10 will offer better transparency to the patients during the treatments.
Highly efficient
ICD-10 will help in generating a huge amount of data that can help in providing better public health. It will also help the government and health care organizations to track any global health threats. With the help of ICD-10, different healthcare organizations can better communicate their research and help each other. Areas of injury research have also experienced an improvement in classifying the type of injuries to find the right cause, treatment, and results. Trauma services evaluations also share similar light.
Better healthcare
Previously the focus of ICD-9 was to improve the reimbursements on all medical treatments and research. With ICD-10, the coding setup has changed to support a performance-based payment system that works to provide better healthcare and treatment before aiming at the returns. It will offer better treatments to the patients as the healthcare professional will focus more on improving their overall quality of treatment and service.
Setting up health policy
Most of the healthcare clinics and organizations around the world have already implemented the ICD-10 coding system. Due to this, health officials can exchange data with each other to compare public health trends. It will help recognize the early patterns of global pandemics and help spread better healthcare policies to all parts of the world. Any reports from one corner of the world can reach the other countries under the same health codes. The health organizations from different states can start working together to find the cure for a pandemic with the same ICD-10 code system.
Better clinical documentation
With ICD-10, healthcare organizations and clinics will be able to keep better-documented reports for patients. There are thousands of new codes added to ICD-10, which can provide better precision while writing down the clinical documents. Each healthcare problem can be categorized better under these codes, which will allow the patients to have better treatment and medication.