After years of delay, the ICD 10 has been finally implemented. Furthermore, fortunately enough it has been able to complete its maiden quarter. We all know that healthcare is a dynamic and ever-changing field with new discoveries, inventions, and latest research every now and then. So there was an urgent need for an improved system of diagnostic codes so that it can incorporate more diseases and their diagnosis procedures. It was the need of time to introduce the tenth revision and proposals pertaining to it were made some five years back. Thus, the WHO came up with ICD 10 which just completed its first quarter and has proved to be quite better than the previous version, the ICD 9, which was introduced 30 years ago.
Important Aspects of ICD 10
The ICD 10 has been a successful venture so far, this can be witnessed by the fact that it incorporates a very useful feature known as the quality measurement. It means that ICD 10 provides increased ability and greater details to incorporate newer technologies and procedures. The newly introduced codes have been designed to provide better data for evaluation and implementation of health care services. It helps to understand complications as well as design clinically proficient algorithms and keep a record of care services.
Increasing the proficiency and ability to depict the severity will lead to better links between the health care provider’s performance and patient’s condition. The ICD 10 ensures that all following countries can notify in case of some health care emergency such as an epidemic that is spreading far and wide. It also helped nations situated in different corners of the world to compare their healthcare services with each other globally, in order to share best possible facilities with each other. So it also covers the aspect of public health.
It has also greatly facilitated in further research as the finer details, which the codes comprise of, result in imparting improved and useful data. Greater details have helped in exposing relationships which were previously not known or hidden. It has also helped in opening avenues of research in injuries detection and trauma services which help in determining the severity of injuries. This, in turn, is designed to help to monitor the performance of injury prevention. Furthermore, the upgrade to ICD 10 has helped providers and payers to provide improved data in support of their efforts to improve their competency, building up efficiencies and containing costs. Broadly speaking, it has greatly helped in providing enhanced facilities for organizational monitoring as well as evaluation of performances. It not only helps in ensuring better health care services but also encourages growth in this field.
Hence, it can be easily said that the capacity of ICD 10 is not at all limited and it allows ample space for incorporating latest research. It includes double the number of codes than ICD 9 so it can accommodate a greater number of diseases and their diagnosis. It has helped in filling the cleavage between the ever-growing needs of time and competence of International Classification of diseases.
