icd-9

I was looking at the way some of our clients use different encounter forms for different types of visits and was wondering about the best ratio of space in the design for diagnoses vs. procedures - should an encounter form be mostly filled with procedure codes or ICD-9 codes?  Or should it be 50/50?   

I didn't reach any conclusions except to note that both sets of codes have a classic "long tail" distribution.  A small segment of ICD-9 codes make up the biggest chunk of usage among our clients and then it's literally 1000s more that make up the rest.

Many thanks to Siousxe for sending me this awesome ICD-9 lookup tool that even works well with an iphone.  There are some other ICD-9 tools on-line and I'm such a nerd that I do it by hand, but this is well conceived and delivered.If only the AMA would actually help it's members by doing the same thing with CPT codes and RVU values.   

I've been erratic, I know, but that's life on the road (another broken hard drive!) and at home with two H1N1 kids.  Here's the latest:

PCC has opened our 2010 ICD-9 prep course for pediatrics to the public.

First order of business: ICD-9 changes for 2008 go into effect on 10/1 and there’s a doozy in there.  Here’s a copy of a message we’ve sent to PCC clients and I’ve left some of the PCC links in there, because anyone can use them and it’s easy to cut and paste!