The First ICD Which Lists Terms for 116 Diseases and 193 Symptoms Based on TM
By Namwook Cho, L.Ac.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will release its new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in February 2021 and the new ICD-11 will be effective in January 2022.
The new ICD-11 will include new chapters for traditional medicine, “3.6 Traditional Medicine conditions – Module 1 (TM 1).”
ICD-11 Will Require Two Different Codes: One from Western ICD, The Other From TM ICD.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will release its new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in February 2021. The new ICD-11, which ICD is also used by health insurers whose reimbursements depend on ICD coding, will be effective in January 2022.
According to the new section for TM, there will be big changes in the new ICD-11, subsections of part 3, 3.6 Traditional Medicine conditions – Module 1 (TM1).
According to WHO, the development of the Supplementary Chapter Traditional Medicine Conditions, Module 1 (TM1) is a result of requests to WHO from several member states to include TM concepts in an international classification such as the ICD. Although countries such as China, Japan, and Korea have developed their country-specific classifications, there was no agreed international standard to collect comparable data or as a starting point for testing the efficacy of interventions and monitoring their safety. TM clinicians have been working 2005-2018 to integrate and standardize their terminology, resulting in the current TM chapter.
A large percentage of the world’s population uses some form of Traditional Medicine. However, standardized data and information on these users’ health status remain largely absent from national and international health data collections. Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies have become an enormous industry and are expected to grow. As a result of this gap in information about TM and the industry’s size, resources have been invested in the creation of a classification tool to allow data to be collected and analyzed.
After January 1, 2022, all acupuncturists will be using two different codings for a claim using a Western ICD code and TM code.
According to the website for ICDs-11, “ICD-11’s chapter on Traditional Medicine disorders and patterns is designed to be integrated with the coding of cases in conjunction with the Western Medicine concepts of ICD Chapters 1-25.”
That will require more work for acupuncturists to be familiar with TM’s symptoms and disease. For example, currently, to claim a patient with neck pain, we used M54.2. But after the new ICD-11 will be useful, M54.2 and either ME84.0, which is for the Cervical spine pain, or ME82, are for pain in joints and neck. Suppose you are interested in ICD-11 codes that are related to acupuncture treatments. In that case, you can get more information regarding the “PK81.3 Acupuncture or related therapies associated with injury or harm in therapeutic use” section (icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/1659650734).
Another significant change of term like Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is not an official term to indicate particular medicine. TCM will be changed to TM, which means Traditional Medicine (TM).
