NWCDN Members regularly post articles and summary judgements in workers’ compensations law in your state.
Select a state from the dropdown menu below to scroll through the state specific archives for updates and opinions on various workers’ compensation laws in your state.
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The much awaited coding change from ICD 9 to ICD 10 is finally here. It is hard to say what
impact it will have on adjusters and other system participants, but change of any kind has unintended
consequences. And many of us are, frankly, resistant to change! One obvious difference is that
diagnoses will now be even more specific, resulting in more care being taken in evaluating initial
claims of injury. And evaluating extent of injury issues, and the relationship between disability and
the accepted or disputed claimed diagnoses,will require an even higher level of expertise. ICD 10
codes can be accessed on the internet, and we will be keeping the sites busy. There are several
sites, such as www.icd10data.com/Convert that provide crosswalks between ICD 9 codes and ICD
10 codes and descriptions for the new codes.
Here are a couple of entertaining examples of the trend toward specificity: W51.XXA: Accidental
striking against or bumped into by another person, V97.33XD: Sucked into jet engine, subsequent
encounter, S10.87XA: Other superficial bite of other specified part of neck, initial encounter, R46.1:
Bizarre personal appearance. Over time you may be lucky enough to see one of these in a comp
case. After all, there are now well over 60,000 codes in ICD 10, compared to around 13,000 codes
in ICD 9.