I guess kind of like they just had Shark Week on TV, this week on EMR and HIPAA has been ICD-10 week. So far I’ve covered EMR vendors ICD-10 planning, moving to ICD-10 and bridging from ICD-9 to ICD-10.

In response to my previous ICD-10 posts, Gordon Fenton provided this interesting insight about the UK’s experience with ICD-10.

Over in the UK we already use the ICD10 along side the OPCS code to generate our HRG’s which is the currenvy that commissioners and providers use in the billing process.

While I am based on the commissioner side I know that our providers employ coders whose specific job is to translate Doctors notes into ICD and OPCS codes.

The main challenge will be in varifying and validating the codes being applied by providers, the IT is just a small issue. It will be very easy for providers to inadvertantly apply the wrong code simply by the fact that there are so many.

You could do a lot worse than look at the UK model for guidance on how we deal with it

I’m always interested to learn from what other countries are doing with technology and EMR. I’d love to learn more about UK provider’s experience with ICD-10 and how we can improve the eventual ICD-10 implementations in the US.