ICD 9 to ICD 10 Transition

So I missed a couple of posts from some time off so forgive me.

This past month was very busy.

At the beginning of this month, there was the much heralded transition from the ICD 9 to ICD 10.

I'll give a brief summary again here. The CPT codes are the procedure codes that the physician checks off as he sees you. Depending on the complexity and time of the case, the physician has varying degrees of office codes in addition to any treatment codes such as vaccines, blood tests, or other procedures like EKG, etc.

Each of these CPT codes needs a corresponding ICD codes. These codes can ensure that the insurance companies can verify that these CPT codes or procedures were necessary as well as just having a documented recording of what was done.

The number of ICD 9 codes were 14,315 codes. ICD 10 will be bringing that number to more than 69,000 distinct codes.

Now why would they do this? I can list several reasons.

1. Not specific enough.

Some of the codes get very very specific. Down to the exact location. In the old ICD 9 codes some of the pain in XYZ place codes were very generic.

2. Reducing redundancy.

For example, vaccines had a CPT code and a corresponding ICD 9 code. Now they just have one vaccine code along with those CPT codes removing those ICD 9 codes.

However, there have been some transition troubles. With our EHR some of the codes we cant find on the system and our medical management software has some of them or doesn't have some of the codes. Some of the lab companies have had problems as well. We have a phlebotomist that can't find some of the ICD 10 codes that correspond with the ICD 9 codes. However, these are transition issues that I believe will resolve themselves over time as people adjust.