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Medical Billing Codes For Injury Via Turtle Among Thousands Created by New Law
A new government law has created an unusually precise list of injury codes for billing purposes. Currently there are 18,000 standard billing codes; the new law would expand that list to around 140,000. If you've been injured at the Opera, walked into a lamppost, pulled something while playing a trumpet, or have been attacked by a turtle, there's now a code for that. From the article: "The federal agencies that developed the system—generally known as ICD-10, for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision—say the codes will provide a more exact and up-to-date accounting of diagnoses and hospital inpatient procedures, which could improve payment strategies and care guidelines. "It's for accuracy of data and quality of care," says Pat Brooks, senior technical adviser at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
W56.49 "Other encounter with shark" + W90.2 "Exposure to laser radiation" is all I've got.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
While people are beating themselves silly to denounce this as "nanny state" or "government take-over of your life", they are missing how this is useful.
This actually makes health care data more usable. They are setting in a standard ontology for records. It improves comparability across different parts of the country or parts of the population.
To take the turtle example, previously if you were interested in turtle accidents, you may have needed to look under "reptile" "turtle" "tortoise" or maybe even just "animal". For that matter some people call snapping turtles just "snappers", which of course is also a kind of fish. Now with standard coding it is easier to find quickly who is being hurt by turtles, how often, when, and where.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The 25 or so other countries who use these codes already have not yet imploded.
I just learned about this kind of injury recently. Apparently sea turtle rape of scuba divers is a not-as-uncommon-as-you-might-think issue, with drowning, compression/decompression sickness, and trauma being common effects, as sea turtles will force divers to the bottom of the ocean and hold them their for as much as an hour. Without being an expert myself, I'd wager cardio-respritory care would be needed in addition to trauma treatment.
This post is not intended to be humorous, this is an actual, serious issue I learned about with loggerhead turtles recently.
I believe you start with the most general, such as
C Malignant Neoplasms
and add details
C71 Malignant neoplasm of brain
C71.4 Malignant neoplasm of brain, Occipital lobe
Just to expand on that, I looked up the full titles for those codes:
W5649xA Other contact with shark, initial encounter
W902xxA Exposure to laser radiation, initial encounter
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