‘Every ICD-10 Code’ seems to have missed a few

At least we now know that "other contact with crocodile" is a billable medical condition in ICD-10.

By Neil Versel on October 20, 2015 6:57 am

And the award for busiest tweeter goes to … MedData.

Who, you ask? MedData is a Brecksville, Ohio-based vendor of healthcare revenue-cycle management technology. What’s really important here is that the company is behind @EveryICD10, a Twitter account that has been tweeting out — you guessed it — every ICD-10 code.

Between July 9 and Oct. 9, @EveryICD10 tweeted 69,763 times. That’s an average of 750 tweets per day, or more than one tweet every two minutes for 93 days. For a while, the account was tweeting every minute, so let’s hope it was automated. (UPDATE, Oct. 21: It was.)

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There are some good ones in the new code set, which has been praised for its specificity. And specific it is. Every one of these is now a billable medical diagnosis. Some are laughable, some cringeworthy.

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And, of course, there are these for, say, MedCity News reporters up well past midnight writing stories:

But here’s the thing: ICD-10 contains 69,823 diagnosis codes. In other words, MedData missed a few. C’mon, guys. Finish the job!

UPDATE, Oct. 21: MedData Marketing Manager Sean Biehle informs us that the company experienced Twitter throttling on Sept. 30 and Oct. 2. Since MedData sent the tweets randomly through TweetJukebox, it’s taken a few weeks to figure out which ICD-10 codes it missed.

Just to be safe, MedData will soon retweet the entire code set, plus a few fake ones, Biehle said. There will be prizes for those who can spot the fakes.

Photo: MedData