The bloated upgrade to the coding system is coming, and the results won’t be pretty. It’s predicted that documentation requirements and costs will rise, while patient care suffers.
PookieMD wonders what if Starbucks adopted an ICD-10-like system:
I could code and bill for beverages as follows: a small cappuccino would be a 99212(01), a medium 99213(02), and a large a 99214(03), and jumbo would be a 99215(04). I could add modifiers to denote skim, 2% or whole milk. Shots of flavoring would require modifiers as well. So, a medium, skinny cappuccino with a shot of hazelnut would be a 99213(02)-7-13 (taking into account the ’skinny’ or -7 and the hazelnut -13.) I would of course charge you, the customer, more for my nifty billing system.
It’s estimated that primary care doctors will have to see an extra 2.3 patients per day to offset the costs of implementing the system. Grim times ahead.
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{ 2 comments }
Starbucks, like most other successful companies, do well by satisfying customers at the point of purchase. They also have to track activity using methods that may seem completely arbitrary, such as UPC-A product marking and its rich and deep provider infrastructure, and they all do it without much effort. ICDxx is, effectively, a deliberate barrier that benefits policy makers in various ways, not the demands and requirements of a free market. It can only get worse. Why the doctors don’t get together and come up with an alternative is a mystery.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG
Psychiatry, does indeed have it’s own numerical diagnostic coding system. But the third parties insist on theirs. Fortunately, most of the numbers are the same.
As for CPT, medicine did that one to themselves.
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