ICD-10 is long overdue and will provide extensive benefits to the medical community, even though there are hesitations from medical professionals. There are three major benefits of using ICD-10 in the US that make up for any inconveniences that the change may bring.

ICD-10 Offers High Quality Measurement

One of the biggest benefits of ICD-10 is that it offers the best detail available for providing information for coding procedures. This should greatly reduce the number of coding errors as compared to ICD-9. The new program is also able to accommodate new technologies that will naturally arise in the course of medical research and development. The codes provided by ICD-10 are expected to be able to provide improved patient care because it offers more detailed patient information. This, in turn, will allow medical personnel to better evaluate outcomes. The new, more complete measures that include information about severity will help medical providers by greatly expanding information about medical safety issues and medical procedure complications. Performance and organizational data can also be collected and reviewed by medical staff to improve patient care. Both healthcare providers and billing professionals can expect a reduced need for supporting documentation for medical services using ICD-10, since much of the information needed is included in the code.

ICD-10 offers Modernization of Public Health Records

In order to share disease information with the rest of the world, the US must use ICD-10 to accurately distribute this data at a time when diseases spread so quickly around the globe. When the United States uses ICD-10, it will be better able to internationally share information about diseases to protect those in the US as well as those living in other countries.

Once ICD-10 is implemented, the US will also be able to communicate information about its quality of care and best practices worldwide. This will help other countries improve their quality of care and also aid the US in learning new global healthcare techniques from other countries.

Research Benefits from ICD-10

The finer detail available through the use of ICD-10 and the increased logic in the codes will reduce the number of errors in coding in the future, making the system work more efficiently in the long run. Improved coding analysis will aid researchers who have no direct patient medical records access. Greater detail also enables researchers to connect relationships and phenomena that would have otherwise gone undetected. Understanding the outcomes of some procedures more thoroughly may also enable doctors to use less expensive procedures without lessening the results of the treatments.

One interesting benefit of using ICD-10 is that it is expected to improve research into the severity of injuries. ICD-9 did not aid researchers in this endeavor. When the US can rate the severity and nature of an injury it will be better able to describe the possible mortality risk and level of residual impairment involved in the injury, thus improving patient care. Doctors will then be able to use ICD-10 coding to monitor injuries and design injury prevention control plans.

While it will take some education, time and effort to set up ICD-10 and get it running, the benefits to healthcare facilities in the United States and around the world will be worth the work. Healthcare providers will be able to share information as well as keep track of patient progress using the program. The improvements in healthcare quality while using ICD-10 cannot be denied.