Got a patient who drowned from jumping off burning water skis? Well, there's a new medical billing code for that. Next fall, a transformation is coming to the arcane world of medical billing. Overnight, virtually the entire health care system -- Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers, hospitals, doctors and various middlemen -- will switch to a new set of computerized codes used for determining what ailments patients have and how much they and their insurers should pay for a specific treatment.