3 Main types of Medical code that you must know!

The need for keeping everything in a short and systematic way has given birth to the concept of Medical Coding. It refers to changing-over the healthcare diagnosis, medical services and equipment into a combination of alphanumeric medical codes. This transformation ensures uniform documentation and helps administrations to look at the prevalence and effectiveness of the treatment.

For better efficiency, these codes are divided into three broad categories namely- ICD, CPT, HCPCS. Let us now learn about these coding categories.

ICD (International Classification of Diseases)

Established by WHO in late 1940s ICD codes are the diagnosis codes used to create a vocabulary for describing the cause of illness, injury or death. The revised ICD-10-CM which contains over 68000 codes is being used these days which has been modified by National Center for Health Statistics- a division of CMS (Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Studies). These codes are mainly used to represent the patient’s condition and doctor’s diagnosis. Coding is essential to ensure that a precise and accurate report is sent for further billing.

CPT (Current Procedural Terminology)

Current Procedural terminology Codes are 5 digit numeric codes published and maintained by the American Medical Association (AMA). These codes are divided into 3 categories. The first category deals with 6 range including Anesthesia, Surgery, Evaluation & Management, Pathology & Laboratory, Radiology and Medicine. The second category is dedicated towards performance measurement and the final category deals with emerging Medical technology. A coder usually deals with the first two categories but at times other codes are also used.

HCPCS (Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System)

HCPCS are the official code set not covered by CPT Codes. Outpatient hospital care, chemotherapy drugs, Medicaid and Medicare codes are all covered under the HCPCS category. They are divided into 2 levels, where the first one is quite similar to CPT code and the other level is divided into 17 sections which are all very essential part of medical coding.

This is just nutshell information about the 3 main medical codes. If you want to know more about them or want to buy a Medical Coding Book, eBook or any other resource you want to visit at Coding Material and choose from a wide variety of product.