The Ohio Medicaid School Program (MSP) requires that therapists assign an ICD-9 Code to each student that they document medical services for under MSP. ICD stands for “International Classification of Diseases”, and is an alphanumeric code that corresponds to the symptom or diagnosis related to the medical service being provided. These classifications are used worldwide and are developed by the “World Health Organization”, and in the U.S. are overseen by the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). All medical services worldwide uses this coding system.
An example of an ICD-9 Code is: Expressive Language Disorder – ICD-9 = 315.31
Beginning with services dated October 1, 2015, the ICD-9 coding system will change to ICD-10 Codes. There are currently approximately 18,000 different ICD-9 Codes and they have been in use since 1979. There will now be over 140,000 ICD-10 codes which are more clinically accurate and include more recent medical terminology.
Many of the ICD-9 Codes have a one-on-one cross match with an ICD-10 Code, but some ICD-9 Codes will now be broken down into several ICD-10 Codes. In our MSP documentation system, the ICD-9 Codes with a one-on-one match will automatically update to the new code. For those that do not have a one-on-one match, the user will be given the corresponding ICD-10 Codes to choose from, which will then be automatically saved in the student file. Since we have 365 days from the date of service to process MSP claims, we will be using both codes until 10/01/2016. The system will automatically choose the ICD-9 or ICD-10 Code based on the service date.
This ICD-10 conversion is taking place nationwide and all medical services provided after October 1, 2015 will require the new coding. We have tried to make this transition as transparent as possible, as we realize that therapists do not have a lot of time to change codes manually. The Ohio Department of Medicaid has spent a lot of time and effort to get their payment system (MITS) ready for this changeover. We are confident that we will have a smooth transition on October 1st.