Myth #4: Because there are isolated examples of ICD-10 codes that will rarely, if ever, be used, the entire system is riddled with unnecessary detail.



Fact: Another variation of the “too many codes” argument is the contention that much of the detail in ICD-10 is unnecessary. However, the primary examples of unnecessary detail that are given are from the external cause of injury section of ICD-10, typically dealing with injuries from animals (alligator versus crocodile bite). There are 1,291 external cause of injury codes in ICD-9 and 6,812 external cause codes in ICD-10. However, except for a very narrow set of external cause codes that deal primarily with medical interventions (surgery on wrong body part), Medicare does not require that physicians or other providers report external cause of injury codes. Further, with the exception of special circumstances like a worker’s compensation claim, few other payers require the coding and reporting of external cause of injury codes. Therefore, use of these codes presents minimal if any coding and reporting burden for physicians or other providers.