Haven't heard much about this, but I did do an audiocast last month (see Dennis Melamed's Audiocast Site) which discussed the increased amount of information ICD-10 will include, and the impact on privacy. With more specificity in the diagnosis, we have increased information in the hands of the health plans. Do staff who currently deal with diagnoses codes need all that information? What about the customer service folks?
Also impacts on the "de-identification" issue. Since we have more codes, we will have smaller cells when summarizing results by diagnosis codes. Will some of the cells be too small?
An example of the increased specificity and the implications. Now, we have one sports injury code. Under ICD-10-CM, there are 24 codes for injury, broken down by the sport and the type of injury. All of a sudden, we will be getting statiistics on injury by sport. Who needs to know this, and should it be kept from certain eyes. Don't know, but what if the "anti-lacrosse" folks get a hold of data showing more injuries in lacrosse than in other sports. Do they try and get lacrosse banned?
This is an innocuous example, but it gets more serious as we look at more serious diseases.
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