Endocrine Insider
August 21, 2008 

Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a proposal to replace the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) diagnosis codes with the ICD-10 code sets, effective October 1, 2011.  ICD-9-CM code sets were adopted for use in 2000 and are now considered outdated due to their limited ability to include new procedures or diagnoses. Approximately 17,000 codes are available under ICD-9-CM, while ICD-10 contains more than 155,000 codes and can accommodate new diagnoses and procedures.

Under the HHS proposal, ICD-10 will include both the clinical modification codes for diagnosis coding and the system used for inpatient hospital procedure coding. HHS has separately proposed adopting the X12 standard (Version 5010)—the dominant standard for electronic commerce—and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs standard, which provides data interchange and processing standards for pharmacy services. HHS states that these standards are essential to the use of ICD-10 codes.

The Endocrine Society is concerned with the enormous undertaking that implementation of ICD-10 requires, including an adequate timeline in which to complete these transitions. As such, the Society recently joined other specialty societies in signing on to a letter to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, stating continued concerns with ICD-10 implementation. View the letter by clicking here. 

HHS' proposal to convert to ICD-10 code sets will be posted for public comment August 22 through October 21, 2008. The proposed regulations can be viewed at: Proposed Regulations.