Edited from cdc.gov
International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM)
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the Federal agency
responsible for use of the International Statistical Classification of
Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD-10) in the
United States, has developed a clinical modification of the
classification for morbidity purposes.
The ICD-10 is used to code and
classify mortality data from death certificates, having replaced ICD-9
for this purpose as of January 1, 1999. ICD-10-CM is planned as the
replacement for ICD-9-CM, volumes 1 and 2.
The ICD-10 is copyrighted by WHO
which owns and publishes the classification.
WHO has authorized the
development of an adaptation of ICD-10 for use in the United States for
U.S. government purposes. As agreed, all modifications to the ICD-10
must conform to WHO conventions for the ICD. ICD-10-CM was developed
following a thorough evaluation by a Technical Advisory Panel and
extensive additional consultation with physician groups, clinical
coders, and others to assure clinical accuracy and utility.
The entire draft of the Tabular List of ICD-10-CM, and the
preliminary crosswalk between ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM were made available
on the NCHS website for public comment.
The public comment period ran
from December 1997 through February 1998. The American Hospital
Association and the American Health Information Management Association
conducted a field test for ICD-10-CM in the summer 2003.
All comments and suggestions from the open comment period and the field
test were reviewed, and additional modifications to ICD-10-CM were made
based on these comments and suggestions.
Additionally, new concepts
have been added to ICD-10-CM based on the established update process for
ICD-9-CM (the ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee) and the
World Health Organization's ICD-10 (the Update and Revision Committee).
This represents ICD-9-CM modifications from 2003-2011 and ICD-10
modifications from 2002-2010.
Specific improvements over
ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 include: the addition of
information relevant to ambulatory and managed care encounters; expanded
injury codes; the creation of combination diagnosis/symptom codes to
reduce the number of codes needed to fully describe a condition; the
addition of 6th and 7th characters; incorporation of common 4th
and 5th digit subclassifications; laterality; and greater specificity in
code assignment.
The new structure will allow further expansion than
was possible with ICD-9-CM.
On Jan 16, 2009 HHS published a final rule adopting ICD-10-CM
(and ICD-10-PCS) to replace ICD-9-CM in HIPAA transactions, effective
implementation date of Oct 1, 2013. The implementation of ICD-10
was delayed from Oct 1, 2013 to Oct 1, 2014 by final rule
CMS-0040-F issued on Aug 24, 2012.
Until then the codes in ICD-10-CM are not valid for any purpose or use.