Emergency departments will feel negative impacts from the changeover to the new ICD-10 coding system, according to a paper published this month in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Currently, about 27% of emergency department ICD-9 codes are convoluted and could point to problems with clinical workflow and financial health at hospitals, according to the report. Those problems will continue when the switch to ICD-10 occurs, the researchers from University of Illinois at Chicago say.
ICD-9 has only 14,000 codes, while ICD-10 will have more than 68,000.