ICD-10 Procedure Coding System

The ICD-10 Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) is an international system of medical classification used for procedural coding. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for maintaining the inpatient procedure code set in the U.S., contracted with 3M Health Information Systems in 1995 to design and then develop a procedure classification system to replace Volume 3 of ICD-9-CM. ICD-9-CM contains a procedure classification; ICD-10-CM does not. ICD-10-PCS is the result. ICD-10-PCS was initially released in 1998. It has been updated annually since that time. The ICD-10 Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) is an international system of medical classification used for procedural coding. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for maintaining the inpatient procedure code set in the U.S., contracted with 3M Health Information Systems in 1995 to design and then develop a procedure classification system to replace Volume 3 of ICD-9-CM. ICD-9-CM contains a procedure classification; ICD-10-CM does not. ICD-10-PCS is the result. ICD-10-PCS was initially released in 1998. It has been updated annually since that time. Each code consists of seven alphanumeric characters. The first character is the 'section'. The second through seventh characters mean different things in each section. Each character can be any of 34 possible values the ten digits 0-9 and the 24 letters A-H, J-N and P-Z may be used in each character. The letters O and I are excluded to avoid confusion with the numbers 0 and 1. There are no decimals in ICD-10-PCS Of the 72,081 codes in ICD-10-PCS, 62,022 are in the first section, 'Medical and surgical'.