What ICD-11 is

Hook

Since 1 January 2022, the world's official classification of diseases has been ICD-11. Many countries are already working with it, and others are still planning. So what is it?

What it is

ICD stands for the International Classification of Diseases. It's published by the World Health Organization, and it has evolved through 11 revisions over about 150 years. The World Health Assembly adopted ICD-11 on 25 May 2019, and it came into effect on 1 January 2022. It's free to use, and it was built for electronic health records, with its coding tools delivered through APIs.

What it's used for

ICD is used most widely for cause-of-death statistics. It's also used to classify clinical documentation, which supports resource allocation, case mix, patient safety, quality of care, primary care and research.

What's different

The headline difference: ICD-11 has more than 17,000 diagnostic categories, and it adds detail by combining codes into clusters, rather than building every combination into its own code. We'll spend most of this course on exactly that.

What it is not

One thing to keep straight. ICD-11 is a diagnosis classification. It doesn't replace CPT or HCPCS, and it doesn't include a procedure classification. WHO's procedure classification, ICHI, is still being developed.

Recap

So: ICD-11 is in effect worldwide, it's free, it's built for digital systems, and it adds detail through clusters. Each country decides its own timeline, and the ideas are worth learning now.