Friday, December 21, 2007

Medical Coding: The ICD-10-PCS (Procedure Coding System)

Procedure codes are numbers or alphanumeric codes used to identify specific health interventions taken by medical professionals. The ICD-10-PCS is a system of medical coding used for procedure codes.

The coding professional world is getting trained and waiting for the implementation of the ICD-10-PCS. Developed by The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) this new procedure coding system will be a successor to Volume 3 of ICD-9-CM and a modified version of the original ICD-10. Who is responsible for the implementation of the new coding system? Well it is the World Health Organization (WHO) that gave permission to the NCHS to develop the ICD-10-PCS and only the WHO has to decide on the date when the new system will replace the ICD-9-CM. The ICD-10-CM is the proposed replacement for ICD-9-CM, Volumes 1 & 2. Has the rest of the world also been implementing similar processes? Here is a document on the assessment of the ICD-10 in the South East Asia region from the WHO website http://whqlibdoc.who.int/searo/2002/SEA_HS_220.pdf

Take a look at the NCHS Homepage at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm

Every medical code has seven characters that can be alphanumeric (either alphabets or numbers) These are the characters.