News: Number of reported opioid-related diagnoses increased after ICD-10-CM implementation

According to a study recently published in Medical Care, inpatient stays involving any opioid-related diagnosis increased by 14.1% after ICD-10-CM was implemented in 2015, JustCoding reported.

The study examined how trend analyses of inpatient stays involving opioid diagnoses were affected by the transition to ICD-10-CM, which introduced thousands of new and more specific coders.

Changes were examined in the number of opioid-related stays before, during, and after the transition to ICD-10-CM using quarterly ICD-9-CM data from 2015 and quarterly ICD-10-CM data from the fourth quarter of 2015 and the first three quarters of 2016, the study said.

Overall, the study noted that stays involving any opioid-related diagnosis increased by 14.1% during the ICD-10-CM transition. The study noted that this was preceded by a much lower 5% average quarterly increase before the transition and followed by a 3.5% average increase after the transition.

“In stratified analysis, stays involving adverse effects of opioids in therapeutic use showed the largest increase (63.2%) during the transition, whereas stays involving abuse and poisoning diagnoses decreased by 21.1% and 12.4%, respectively,” the study said.

The study says that the sharp increase in opioid-related stays during the transition to ICD-10-CM may indicate that the new classification system is capturing stays that were missed by ICD-9-CM data. Data used for this study was from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State inpatient databases for 14 states in 2015 and 2016.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in JustCoding. To read about the 2018 coding changes, including those related to drug use, click here.