Re:other countries/coding

[Guest guest]

Hm, not sure about question #1 altough I did medical school in Europe.

What I do know, though, is that many countries use ICD-10 instead of

ICD-9. ICD-10 is just a newer version of the ICD. In fact, all WHO

member countries report their disease statistics using ICD-10. Crazy

enough that that means for the US to convert ICD-9 into ICD-10 in order

to do our obligatory reporting. BTW, we use a " clinically modified "

version of the ICD-9 hence its name ICD-9 CM. We in the US just never

made the leap from ICD-9 to 10.

Medical terminologies are a subject on its own. We basically use what's

cheap and available to report our diseases and symptoms. There are many

other medical terminologies. The currently most promising one - and I

think we will hear more about this one in the future - is SNOMED. SNOMED

used to be quite costly to purchase and utilize but I think it has

recently being released for public use in the US.

Marius