Carl Natale wrote today in his article “ICD-10 Data: Why U.S. healthcare needs to move on from ICD-9 coding” that while many opponents of ICD-10 say that it won’t improve patient care, the fact is that it will – just not right away. Compiling enough data to make a significant difference can take years, but it will eventually serve to reduce medical uncertainty, identify risk factors, discover links between symptoms and diagnoses, and identify fraud, waste, and abuse. Medical coding specificity is certainly more work upfront, but it can be the key to improving health and saving both lives and money.
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