Nice ICD10 Booklet for ENTs

The American Academy of Otolaryngology (AAO-HNS) has put out a sample ICD10 booklet of sorts which may come very handy once ICD10 usage becomes mandatory in 2014. ICD stands for "International Classification of Diseases" and is the way physicians code for a given medical problem. It also is one way health insurance determines what tests or surgeries will be approved or not.

The current ICD system being used is called ICD9.

Within ICD9, an acute ear infection (whether right or left side) would be coded as 382.9.

With ICD10, more detail is contained. For example, ICD10 code H66.002 is left acute ear infection without rupture.

Although ICD10 will contain much more detail about the medical condition being described, with increased detail brings more headaches as one ICD9 condition may now have 10 other related ICD10 codes that need to be specified.

Which means ENT related ICD codes which used to all potentially fit on a one page cheat sheet may now take over 10+ pages booklet.

The AAO-HNS was nice enough to compile a booklet of the most common medical diagnosis with their ICD10 codes for the otolaryngology specialty.

You can download the pdf or MS Word doc here.