ICD Coding advice from the WHO for the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19)

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The purpose of this post is to share the World Health Organization [WHO] official diagnosis coding guidance update for health care encounters and deaths related to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) previously named 2019-nCoV.

Screenshot image from ICD-10

ICD-10 Chapter XXII: Codes for special purposes has a special sub-category called U07 Emergency use of U07. WHO’s recent creation of an emergency ICD-10 code U07.1, is assigned to the disease diagnosis of 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease. See my screenshot image from ICD-10 to the left.

 

The title of U07 will be changed back to ‘codes for emergency use’.

It is to be noted that the name ‘2019-nCoV’ is temporary and is likely to change (to be independent of date and virus family, and for consistency with international virus taxonomy).

For ICD-11, the code for the illness would be RA01.0

A new and final ICD-10-CM code title for the COVID-19 diagnosis code is now [March 17–18, 2020] been established, and will be implemented effective October 1, 2020, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC), USA and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), USA.

References:

  1. Emergency use ICD codes for COVID-19 disease outbreak, Classifications, WHO, <http://www9.who.int/classifications/icd/covid19/en/>
  2. Organizations Developing New Codes for COVID-19, and a Primer on the Virus, Under the Dome, Journal of AHIMA, <https://journal.ahima.org/new-icd-10-cm-code-for-covid-19-becomes-effective-october-1/>

ICD-11 2018 version: Part 2 – The ICD-11 Menu Hierarchy

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The ICD-11 Homepage at https://icd.who.int/ (opens in a new tab of this same open window) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) website is a specific point in time when you “Discover” the ICD-11 interface to then “Explore” to both the whole time you are looking for something about ICD-11 and the time you discovered something about ICD-11.

From this Homepage, the reader discovers a top-level menu that brings you to various “places” within the ICD-11 Homepage. Below is a chart (you can view a larger image of this chart by clicking on this chart which will open in a new tab of this same open window) from my discovery of these various “places” and what I found from my exploration.  This chart shows the ICD-11 Menu Hierarchy as I had discovered and explored. In future posts, I shall write more on each individual menu item.

ICD-11 2018 version: Part 1 – The Launch

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The 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) is here!

ICD-11 was launched Monday, 18. June 2018 from Geneva, Switzerland at 11:45 Europe Summer Time (GMT+02:00), i.e. from 5:45pm Malaysia Time.

I attended the webinar for this launch via WebEx. The webinar was about three (3) hours long.

The webinar started with a video message from Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the Director General, WHO. This opening video was followed by several  key presenters who presented the following topics:

  1. Dr Hiroyuki Suenaga , Vice President Japan Hospital Association who spoke on ICD-11 Resource allocation and clinical documentation;

  2. ICD-11 Modern use of health information by Dr Christopher G. Chute, who is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Informatics, Professor of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing, Chief Research Information Officer, Johns Hopkins Medicine,  and also the Deputy Director, Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Johns Hopkins University;

  3. ICD-11 – what is new was presented by Dr Robert Jakob, Team Leader Classifications, Terminologies and Standards;

  4. Dr Lale Say, Coordinator Adolescents and at-Risk Populations who briefed on ICD-11 Maternal and sexual health with special emphasis on gender issues;

  5. Dr Shekhar Saxena, Director Mental Health and Substance Abuse elaborated on gaming disorders in ICD-11 and Mental health;

  6. Dr Wansa Paoin, Head of CC, Thailand spoke on implementing ICD in a country;

  7. implementation package presentation was given by a WHO representative; and

  8. ICD-11 – Global action plan for implementation and regional focal points for health information by the various WHO Regional Offices representatives

All of the above was followed-up by a Question & Answer Period that lasted about 30 minutes, from members of the floor as well as from online attendees.

Before closure, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Deputy Director General for Programmes WHO did the closing remarks, followed by Dr John Grove, Director, IER – WHO doing the closure.

This new release is to allow Member States to prepare for implementation, including translating ICD into their national languages. Member States will start reporting using ICD-11 on 1 January 2022 i.e. about 3 years and 6 months from now, after due endorsement from the 72nd World Health Assembly in May 2019.

The reader can access the ICD-11 website for more details at https://icd.who.int/. A screenshot of the ICD-11 homepage is displayed below.

More details about what is ICD-11, how ICD-11 works, and what’s new in ICD-11 among other topics will be posted shortly here.

Reasons I should continue blogging and updating mrpalsmy.com in 2018

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I’ve been enthusiastic for the past few years ever since I started on setting up this website with website pages, and which also contains a blog for posts, which is why I call this mrpalsmy.com website a website-blog.

Maintaining a website-blog practically forces you to develop routines and content plans. These routines can be mimicked in my dietary planning as I am senior citizen and need to be aware and control food intakes, workout regimens to keep a healthy body going, personal discipleship, and relationships with the spouse and kids as well as friends and realtives. A successful website-blog may not always mean more page views. Personal growth through the discipline of updating a website and blogging can be success in and of itself. My blog posts here at mrpalsmy.com had since created a routine for blogging and updating a personal-professional-life website from the beginning, for which I am grateful.

All that being said, I’ve been a sporadic blogger of mrpalsmy.com for the past two years, during 2016 and 2017. The reason I stopped blogging as well updating mrpalsmy.com was as I thought I had covered most needs and guidance on aspects of Health Information Management (HIM) development as well in matters relating to HIM and healthcare quality activities for a developing country like Malaysia. As we look ahead to 2018, I do have positive reasons that I really should consider blogging in 2018 as well updating mrpalsmy.com. And I am encouraged to continue to post to the mrpalsmy.com blog, as I think blogging forces me to think more about a subject. I am also encouraged to update mrpalsmy.com with more and new updated information to the website pages I have created. Since this is a personal website, I believe it adds credibility in my professional life. I think having a professional-looking website helps add credibility. When it comes to dining, we eat with our eyes first. A meal that looks appetising will psychologically taste better than one that doesn’t—even if it’s the same dish. The same goes with a personal website or blog. If you have an eye-catching site, you will be taken more seriously than if you don’t.

Another reason to continue to update and blog in mrpalsmy.com is my readers. There is no way I will ever meet all of my readers or visit every country my readers live in. But the number of people I “have met” through this site is incalculably greater than it would be if mypalsmy.com did not exist. Thus, if my website blog content is high-quality, I believe my readers are going to look forward to newly published content on my blog as well this website. But surely I am not going to give my regular readers what they want by publishing as often as I can, without sacrificing quality. I think posting at least once a week is going to be sufficient to establish a regular core of my readers, and these readers are typically the ones who will form the core of my brand community.

In terms of capturing the most traffic, more blog posts and regular updates to the website is going to be generally better; more  times the inbound linking and indexing opportunities. To use a fishing metaphor, it’s like casting more hooks into the water; the more you cast, the more fish you’ll catch. Of course, this assumes that all of my blog posts and website updates are equal in quality. If the number of posts I make is like the number of hooks in the water, then the quality of my content is like the tastiness of the bait I use on my hook.

To end this blog post, I know that getting the ball rolling is often the hardest part, because it means coming up with a topic or title for my next blog post.

But I have updated already the Events Page of mrpalsmy.com and also posted some featured news in the footer section of mrpalsmy.com, for a start.

Organising a World of HIM

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IHMIA Organising a World of HIMInternational leaders and renowned speakers from the Health Information Management (HIM) sector will present the most recent advances in HIM to HIM professionals from around the globe when they congregate to learn, to exchange experiences and to develop enduring friendships when the International Federation of Health Information Management (IFHIMA) holds its flagship event – its 18th international conference in Tokyo Japan, from October 12 to October 14, 2016.

In preparation for this congress, IFHIMA has produced an article by Ms Lorraine Fernandes as the regional IFHIMA director for the Americas, on the subject “IFHIMA – Organizing a World of HIM”. This article was first published in the April 2016 issue in the Journal of the American Health Information Management Association (JAHIMA). The article provides an overview about IFHIMA, its purpose, structure as well as benefits for its members, and information about the IFHIMA 2016 congress including content that explores Tokyo as a tourist destination.

Readers of this website-blog can follow this link (this link will open in a new tab of your current browser window) to get access to the article. I wish to express my gratitude to Ms Angelika Haendel, President of IFHIMA and DVMD board member of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany for kindly sharing with me as an IFHIMA member, this link.

I also like to congratulate Ms Lorraine Fernandes – who according to Ms Anegelika Haendel, who had first raised the idea to write this article, then organised and lead the group of authors which enabled it to be published in JAHIMA, and who also painstakingly secured AHIMA’s permission to share this article with the international HIM community.

Happy Reading!