'University Library System, University of Pittsburgh'
Abstract
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system has great Public Health significance in the sense that it is extremely effective in capturing public health diseases and is implemented across various health organizations through information systems. The ICD is the world’s standard tool to capture mortality and morbidity data. It organizes and codes health information that is used for statistics and epidemiology, health care management, allocation of resources, monitoring and evaluation, research, primary care, prevention, reimbursement and treatment. It helps to provide a picture of the general health situation of countries and populations. Users of the system include physicians, nurses, other providers, researchers, health information management professionals and coders, health information technology professionals, policy-makers, insurers and patient organizations. The ICD system is highly important because it provides a common language for reporting and monitoring disease, which allows the world to compare and share data in a consistent and standard way. As the change from ICD-9 to ICD-10 happens, it will be more important than ever that all users are properly up on the system, it is implemented correctly and users are trained accordingly
