DOHA: The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) has introduced a unified coding system that makes it easier for doctors to analyse, classify and register all diseases and symptoms, helping improve healthcare management here.
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) will be made mandatory for all healthcare providers here before the national health insurance programme is launched in the middle of next year. The new-system will play an important part in improving quality care for patients, help achieving milestones set out in the National Health Strategy 2011-2016 (NHS), by providing greater specificity and detail on disease and illness, improved technology and data collection.
"The new system will be used to classify diseases, by which every health condition will be assigned a unique category and given a code. Each category can include a set of similar diseases," a senior SCH official told The Peninsula.
"It means that each diagnosis will have a code that goes with it. That code means that every healthcare provider, in Qatar or in many other parts of the world, will understand the diagnosis the same way. Hence there will be no confusion over the disease between the practitioners," he said.
ICD codes are a combination of alphabetic and numeric designations given to every diagnosis, description of symptoms and cause of death attributed to people. These classifications are developed, monitored and copyrighted by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Qatar will adopt the Australian Version 6 of ICD (ICD-10-AM) for coding of all medical services, according to recent SCH circular.
"The new coding system is being introduced as per request from the insurance programme team at SCH. It will be a pre-requisite for the implementation of national health insurance programme and is likely to be used for the purpose of claims processing and various other SCH initiatives," he said.
According to the SCH circular, all providers and medical professionals delivering healthcare services in Qatar have been urged to commence the adoption of the ICD-10-AM coding system on time for the Health Insurance pilot starting in the second half of next year.
"Providers who wish to be part of the Health Insurance System will be required to be compatible with ICD-10-AM. The system will have huge impact on the claims, reimbursement and resource allocation in healthcare. ICD codes will be used against the treatment and service prices, facilitating insurance compensations."
Added to this, once electronic medical records are implemented across the country, these codes will have a considerable effect on the healthcare here. The ICD is used worldwide for morbidity and mortality statistics, reimbursement systems and automated decision support in medicine.
According to NHS, one of the underlying causes for limited data availability here is lack of standard healthcare nomenclature and coding system. As health care becomes increasingly complex, the diverse range of clinical coding systems currently being used by providers here impedes the adoption of new health technology, and hinders quality data collection and analysis. Access to accurate information is vital for health sector planning as well as for measuring and monitoring the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the healthcare system and population outcomes.
"This system is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of healthcare statistics. These include the analysis of the general health situation of population groups and monitoring of the incidence and prevalence of diseases and other health problems. Increased statistical data will help in better researches, epidemiological studies and for comparative analysis on both national and international scale," SCH official said.
The adoption of coding system might require significant change in healthcare infrastructure, IT systems and operations for some of the healthcare providers. It will also require adequate training to physicians and allied health professionals. SCH will arrange a series of workshops and discussion forums focused on the implementation of ICD-10-AM.
© The Peninsula 2011
