And now, back to a recurring topic

Whilst I'm taking deep, cleansing breaths on the TN front, I'm returning to an old favourite: ICD-10. I  recently discovered The Misadventures of Ada, in which we discover humour in the medical coding/documentation. The last time I went down this road, I was treated to an imbecilic rant by a troll who seemed to know nothing about the subject, save what he/she had picked up on the Interwebz (so it must be true, right?).

So fundamentals first. I didn't get my ICD-10 knowledge from Google. I've been a certified professional coder for eight years,  worked in health care documentation for three years, and took a certificate in coding before that. So it's just possible I know more than Google about this.

The funny, no, hilarious sections of ICD-10 have little or nothing to do with diagnosis. They come from Sections V through Y, which address external causes of accident and disease, or location of accident or disease. Their purpose is statistical, and they aren't there by chance. Everything you see in these sections has happened at one time or another, and every location is there because it's figured in some accident or disease in the past. These sections have been in all previous editions of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) from the start. At one time the statistical purpose of ICD was its main function. The enumeration of diagnoses and procedures became the main purpose as its usefulness became apparent.

Why did so many people get their knickers in a twist about this? Because ICD-10 had opponents, chiefly among organisations with special interests, like promoting their own system. Those organisations knew how to manipulate public and legislative opinion. They knew that no layperson  would know that the external causes sections had always been there, and had always had codes that looked silly taken out of context. Thus they flogged that horse, instead of dwelling on, say, the greater precision ICD-10 offers when describing coronary artery disease. That's not funny at all.

Today, these sections are as funny to most coders as they are to the public. First, because many of us can go through our entire career without needing to use them. Second, because the real hilarity shows up when someone miscodes a cause. W56.02, struck by dolphin,  would be far funnier paired with, say, V05.02, "pedestrian on skateboard injured in collision with railway train."

One of my colleagues asked me if I could find external cause codes that accurately described her son's recent injury during a LARP event at a summer camp. It turns out I could. This stuff is obviously of more interest to insurance companies than to clinicians or anyone else, but it does have a purpose.

So browse The Misadventures of Ada. Then, if you want to use Google constructively, chase down the code in question using something like "ICD-10 code W56.02" and see what you find.