Your administrative staff has probably hounded you for years to improve your documentation. With the ICD-10 transition around the corner on October 1, 2014, clinician documentation will be more important than ever. The code sets from have expanded from 14, 400 codes in ICD-9 to 70,000 codes in ICD-10. The main reasons for such the huge increase are the specificity that will exist, in addition to specifying laterality and causality – just to name a few.
For example, for the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, the number of codes grew from 69 ICD-9 codes to 239 ICD-10 codes. For fractures, the number of codes went from 747 ICD-9 codes to 17,099 in ICD-10.
Get a jump on the transition by improving your documentation, and by reading this useful article. Your bottom line is only as good as your documentation.