ICD means International Classification of Diseases … aha the physicians diagnosis codes … ICD-10 for better surveillance wow isn’t that exciting. The change to ICD-10 allows the Government to capture more details about the health status of patients and sets the stage for limiting patient care and public health surveillance across our country. ICD-10 will help move the nation’s health care system backwards, with more paperwork not better people work.

Blogger comment:

The only thing positive about ICD-10 is it makes work for the providers who want a job for a $15 dollar minimum wage earner.  The physician diagnostic coding now embraces 77,000 codes versus 16,000 allowing Big Brother to further the concept of paying for input not output.

This is like General Motors mandating that there be a label on each bolt  and nut that goes into the car and that will improve the quality of the auto … ha … ICD whatever is an input label and has nothing to do with quality or payment.  It is common knowledge that diagnosis is usually inaccurate and unreliable for predicting or prognosticating outcomes.  We need to measure and pay for discharges back to the community (output not input) .  CMS and the academics running health care have induced more minutia with no benefit to anyone other than giving them data to use against the providers of care and the beneficiaries.

In effect the only standardization across the continuum of care currently is the ICD-9 diagnosis codes selected or approved by the physician.  For physicians it justifies billing encounters and hospitals billing Diagnosis Related Group  payments … of course for their income not for outcome.  In fact the hospital is allowed to bill for an average of 4.5 lengths of stay regardless of the actual length of stay for an uncomplicated stroke.  The illness incentive is to discharge the patient under 4.5 days and put the medical care in the laps of the nursing homes where the physicians can prescribe tests and mediations without accountability.  Wow isn’t that exciting that they now have 77,000 reasons to bill not 16,000.