ICD-10 is the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), a medical classification by the World Health Organization (WHO). ICD-10 codes hold critical information about abnormal findings,diseases, treating conditions, epidemiology, external causes of injury, managing health, signs and symptoms.

ICD-10 advocates believe physicians and payers will derive benefits in terms of administrative costs, claims re-processing costs and decrease the number of pending claims. This will also change the way in which diseases are managed and how public health are tracked in the U.S.

The ability to provide granular data will not only boost physician reporting system but also improve research data by providing insights into patterns of diseases, treatments and outcomes.

The ICD-9 to ICD-10 transition will hugely enhance the coding accuracy, measure the quality of care, conduct clinical trials and effectively monitor resource utilization.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) had been relying on ICD-9, a set of codes, to report diagnoses and in-patient procedures. the ICD-9 code set was replaced by the more detailed ICD-10 code set on October 1, 2015 for healthcare reimbursements, research, and reporting services.

While the physicians had to rely on other partners such as billing services and vendors for previous HIPAA mandates, the use of the new codes requires a deeper level of involvement by the physicians.

There are more than 14,400 different codes in ICD-10 which can be further expanded to over 16,000 codes by using optional sub-classifications. For example, compared to ICD-9-CM, ICD-10-CM codes often capture greater detail on the type of injury. ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS help improve quality measurements and patient safety by providing treatment information and medical process evaluation and outcomes. ICD-10-PCS has the capability to capture new procedures and technologies