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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Government Bureaucracy Gone Wild: Medical Service Codes Go From 18,000 to 140,000


Wall Street Journal -- "Today, hospitals and doctors use a system of about 18,000 codes to describe medical services in bills they send to insurers. Apparently, that doesn't allow for quite enough nuance.  A new federally mandated version will expand the number to around 140,000—adding codes that describe precisely what bone was broken, or which artery is receiving a stent. It will also have a code for recording that a patient's injury occurred in a chicken coop. (See code.)"

A search of the code database reveals that there are 12 codes for injuries from alligators, see graphic above.  

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