Fun with ICD-10!

Can we choose to view life as comedy vs. tragedy? The world of healthcare admin today may challenge the notion that we can will ourselves into a good humor. The sea of obstacles that block every reasonable path to handling insurance matters for our company and clients...well, it makes whistling while we work a bit tough at times.

The 70,000 ICD-10-CM codes are integral to this chaos and could be perfect ingredients for a South Park parody. In that spirit, instead of crying over all the bureaucracy, just for the moment, let's have some fun with the pure nonsense of it all.

A mercifully brief history of how our ICD codes came to be:

Back in the 1700s, two Frenchmen, a Scot and a Brit separately decided it was high time someone figured out why over 1/3 of all people died before the age of six. Stuff like smallpox, swinepox, measles and "worms without convulsions" were known culprits. But just how many deaths did each cause? Most of this happy work of going door-to-door collecting reasons people were wiped out occurred in Paris (leaving one to conclude that Hugo didn't have to use artistic license in Les Miserables).

On to the 1800s, when other European and American guys deemed it useful to arrange these diseases by category: epidemic diseases, constitutional diseases, etc. (Hindsight being 20-20, this was paving the way for the labyrinth to come and should have been nipped in the bud!)

At the turn of the century, something called the Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death was published and, intimidated by the official sounding name, a lot of other countries jumped on board.

Because classification histories have the sex appeal of a worm, we'll fast forward through the 20th century, when a whole bunch of worldwide councils, commissions, committees and conferences turned what was, in 1900, a nice manageable list of 35 groups, into the 13,000 category behemoth we work with today.

And now you know.

ICD-10 codes that will make your day

Ushering from this grand experiment in granularity are some wonderful invitations to laugh through our tears. Consider:

W56.22  Struck by Orca, initial encounter.
Would you really go for a second one?

Y92.253 Hurt at the opera.
Is there a phantom to blame?

R46.1       Bizarre personal appearance.
Who decides this?  Feeling a bit judgy?

V95.40     Unspecified spacecraft accident injuring occupant.
\Yes, and please donate green blood if you have it.

Y93.E2     Injury due to activity, laundry.
What, a towel avalanche?

Y92241    Hurt at the library.
Fortunately, the internet has made these perilous visits unnecessary.

W61.12    Struck by macaw.
Not a parrot, not a toucan, mind you... a macaw. Special first aid for special birds?

Z63.1      Problems in relationship with in-laws.
Cross-referenced with major depressive disorder, homicide and bizarre personal appearance (while homicidal).

V97.33     Sucked into jet engine.
If there is a procedure for what ails you after this misadventure, I want to know about it.

W61.62   Struck by a duck.
Not to be confused with the code for violence inflicted by rubber duckies.

Y92.416 Swimming pool of prison as the place of occurrence of the external cause.
Okay, but, um, perhaps you could use a better copywriter?

W59.22   Struck by a turtle.
Was there a hare involved?

And my favorite:

Z99.89     Dependence on enabling machines and devices.
If this is a disease, we're all doomed.

1. S. Next on the horizon: ZZZ1.00 Tripped on virtual charmander while chasing the rare Mewtwo in an attempt to catch 'em all!

You KNOW it's coming.