70,000 Ways to Classify Ailments

Enormous expansion of codes doctors use will change paperwork, insurance, monitoring

Melinda Beck
Sept. 27, 2015 7:46 p.m. ET

Doctors, hospitals and insurers are bracing for possible disruptions on Oct. 1 when the U.S. health-care system switches to a massive new set of codes for describing illnesses and injuries.

Under the new system, cardiologists will have not one but 845 codes for angioplasty. Dermatologists will need to specify which of eight kinds of acne a patient has. Gastroenterologists who don’t know what’s causing a patient’s stomachache will be asked to specify where the pain is and what other symptoms are present—gas? eructation (belching)?—since there is a separate code for each. (Read Full Article).

This article originally appeared at The Wall Street Journal