Use of ICD-10-CM coded hospitalisation and emergency department data for injury surveillance.

Injury surveillance, the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of injury data, provides critical information to support public health efforts to reduce injury-related morbidity, mortality and disability.1 2 For the past several decades, state and local health departments and national agencies in the USA have relied on the use of hospital discharge and emergency department (ED) data coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) to conduct injury surveillance.3 Surveillance case definitions and analyses have been based on ICD-9-CM codes. However, a US mandate to code using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM)4 5 has resulted in a need to update injury surveillance case definitions and analysis guidance based on ICD-10-CM.6–9 Beginning in October 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services required all hospitals and healthcare providers covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to use the ICD-10-CM to report electronic healthcare transactions.4 5 The coding structure of ICD-10-CM is based on ICD-10 mortality coding and classification published by the WHO, however, the classification scheme has been greatly expanded to capture the diagnostic detail needed for medical diagnoses. ICD-10-CM contains nearly five times the number of codes found in ICD-9-CM (approximately 72 000 codes in ICD-10-CM compared with 15 000 codes in ICD-9-CM). Because ICD-10-CM captures greater detail than either ICD-9-CM or ICD-10, this classification system has the potential to provide enhanced understanding of the types and causes of non-fatal injury. Epidemiologists and researchers who are transitioning from the use of ICD-9-CM coded data to ICD-10-CM coded data should note the …