Explain why it would be important to examine infectious and reportable public health conditions when examining ICD-10 and ICD-9 classification systems?

Once all rankings were assigned, a focus group that included seven experts in ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM, and public health convened. Two of the focus group members have medical degrees, two are working on their doctorates in public health and have extensive education and training in coding, and three have coding credentials and have worked in the coding field for more than 10 years. The purpose of the focus group was to review and examine the information accumulated from the study and provide feedback and recommendations regarding where changes need to be made in the ICD-10-CM system. Therefore, the focus group examined the rankings and made changes. The researchers reviewed and discussed all comments from the focus group, clarifying any questions, and then made the appropriate changes to the rankings and code descriptions. In the analysis of all the public health diseases, such as reportable diseases (p < 0.001), top 10 causes of death (p < 0.001), and those related to terrorism (p < 0.001), it was found that the overall rankings for disease capture for ICD-10-CM were significantly higher than the rankings for ICD-9-CM. In this example the p value is a statistic that demonstrates statistical significance. It is computed by running statistical tests to determine if the differences between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM rankings were real or due to chance. If the p value is less than 0.05, the differences seen are not due to chance and it demonstrates that what was found in this study is real. (Watzlaf et al. 2007).

Watzlaf V.J.M., J.H. Garvin, S. Moeini, and P. Anania-Firouzan. 2007. The effectiveness of ICD-10-CM in capturing public health diseases. Perspectives in Health Information Management. 4(6).World Health Organization. 2015. http://www.who.int/en/.

Real-World Case Discussion Questions

1.A descriptive research study was performed to investigate the completeness of the ICD-10-CM coding system in capturing public health diseases when compared to ICD-9-CM. In order to do this, the infectious and reportable public health conditions—such as avian flu, smallpox, anthrax, and such—were examined first. Explain why it would be important to examine infectious and reportable public health conditions when examining ICD-10 and ICD-9 classification systems?

2.Confirm whether or not the research team for this study had appropriate experience to conduct and participate in the study? Why or why not?

3.A ranked score was assigned to each public health disease for both the ICD-10-CM and ICD-9-CM coding systems. Identify what this ranked scoring system looked like and do you believe that is was an objective scoring system? If not, explain why.

4.Explain the final results and conclusions that can be made from this study?