Medical Coding: ICD
Created by Health Science Librarians
Introduction
Medical coding systems are fundamental to medical record keeping as well as to gathering and communicating public health statistics. They are used for a variety of purposes:
- recording causes of death
- coding diseases and procedures
- physician billing and reimbursement
About ICD
International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of mortality statistics. This includes providing a format for reporting causes of death on the death certificate.
Published under various titles since 1900, the ICD is a numeric classification system that arranges diseases and injuries into groups according to established criteria. It is copyrighted by the World Health Organization (WHO), which owns and publishes the classification. WHO monitors annual updates and totally revises the codes approximately every 10 years.
ICD Resources
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ICD-10 OnlineThis online version of the ICD-10 offered through the World Health Organization allows for keyword searching. The ICD-10 is used to code and classify mortality data from death certificates in the United States, having replaced ICD-9 for this purpose as of January 1, 1999.
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ICD-10-CM via CDCDownload zip files of ICD-10-CM. Effective October 1, 2015 with new releases each year.
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ICD-10-CM and GEMs (via CMS)Clinical Modification annual files starting in 2015.
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ICD-10 PCS and GEMs (via CMS)Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) annual files starting in 2015.
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ICD-9-CM via CDCDownloadable (FTP) annual updates 1996 -2011.