Starting October 1, physicians and hospitals in the US need to start use of a huge new coding system to describe visit of patients on insurance claims so that they are paid. At present, US health providers make use of a system of approximately 14,000 codes to designate a diagnosis for repayment purpose.

The updated system is having nearly 68,000 codes; it is basically an expanded dictionary that will be used for storing more of the information from chart of a patient.

As per the government, the change that was awaited since long should assist health officials in better tracking of quality of care, recognize early signs of an outbreak, or search for trends of illness or injury. When it comes to ICD-10, which is the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases, there are codes that indicate new strains of flu, for instance, and also Ebola and its related viruses.

As sports concussions are being emphasized more, the codes can reveal how long patients lost consciousness and if they required regular care.