Transitioning to ICD-10 coding could negatively affect patient safety reporting and perceptions of hospital quality because of inaccurate comparisons between the new codes and those used under the ICD-9 system, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Physician practices and hospitals are transitioning to ICD-10 code sets to accommodate codes for new diseases and procedures, and they are swapping 14,000 codes for about 69,000 codes. Implementation has been set for Oct. 1, 2015.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago examined 23 types of patient safety indicators (PSIs) and determined the accuracy of PSIs when comparing those used in ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes. The study found that of the 23 PSIs examined, three PSIs under ICD-9 had straightforward equivalents in ICD-10; 15 PSIs under ICD-9 resulted in convoluted mapping to ICD-10; and five PSIs under ICD-9 had no equivalents in ICD-10.
According to the study, the transition between the systems might inadvertently increase the number of PSIs and make it impossible to compare the two as ICD-10 is implemented. The researchers wrote that such an issue could increase the risks of under-reported safety incidents, unwarranted inflation of PSIs because of ICD-10’s more specific codes, and increased variability of calculations.
Access to the study is available at http://tinyurl.com/oh7b7vp.