Your health: New medical codes aim to track quality of care

New coding system for insurance claims

If things are a bit tense in your doctor's office come Oct. 1, some behind-the-scenes red tape could be to blame, The Associated Press reports.

That's the day when the nation's physicians and hospitals must start using a massive new coding system to describe your visit on insurance claims so they get paid.

Today, U.S. health providers use a system of roughly 14,000 codes to designate a diagnosis, for reimbursement purposes and in medical databases. To get more precise, the updated system has about 68,000 codes, essentially an expanded dictionary to capture more of the details from a patient's chart.

How precise? Get nipped feeding a bird, and the codes can distinguish if it was a goose or a parrot. Have a bike accident with one of those horse-drawn tourist carriages? Yep, there's a code for that, too.

Unusual accidents aside, the government says the long-awaited change should help health officials better track quality of care, spot early warning signs of a brewing outbreak or look for illness or injury trends.

Might patients see an uptick in insurance denials for coding errors that require the doctor's office to refile the claims? Dr. Robert Wergin, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, is optimistic that providers are ready enough that patients shouldn't feel an impact.

"Sitting in the room with a patient, I don't think you'll notice anything," Wergin said.

Americans and high blood sugar

New research suggests that half of all U.S. adults have diabetes or pre-diabetes, The Associated Press reports.

The study of government health surveys echoes previous research and shows numbers increased substantially between 1988 and 2012 although they mostly leveled off after 2008.

Overall, 12 to 14 percent of adults had diagnosed diabetes in 2012, the latest data available. Most of that is Type 2 diabetes, the kind linked with obesity and inactivity.

Almost 40 percent have pre-diabetes, meaning elevated blood sugar levels that could lead to full-fledged disease. Studies have shown lifestyle changes can delay or prevent diabetes in these people.

Whites had lower diabetes rates than Hispanics, blacks and Asian-Americans.

The study is based on surveys involving in-home exams and questionnaires. It was published in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association.