June 1, 2014
Recently, someone asked me on Twitter, “Has the change in classification of obesity as a disease affected how you treat patients presenting w/ the disease?”
The classification change in question is regarding the American Medical Association’s declaration that obesity is a disease rather than a comorbidity factor.
May 14, 2014
They howled ICD-10 was delayed. And they howled loud and fierce.
Apparently, the life of U.S. healthcare hangs in the throes of 68,000 diagnosis codes.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has switched to ICD-10. But here’s a secret. The World Health Organization’s version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, equivalent to ICD-9-CM.
Let’s reiterate: The rest of the world is not using ICD-10-Clinical Modification set, which has 68,000 codes.
The Canadian version of ICD-10 has about 16,000 codes, but the physicians do not use those codes for billing and reimbursement. They use a more limited code set of about 600 three-digit codes.
June 7, 2013
We had to put the title of this post in quotes because Pamela Scherer McLeod published an article with the same title. She was reporting on a comprehensive and media-stirring exposé that was published by Time on March 4 under the title “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us” (you’ll need a subscription to read the full article). It was written by Steven Brill, a prominent journalist and entrepreneur who founded Court TV.