Opinion: ICD-10 delay—Politics trump health data quality

Progress toward more specific medical data gathering has been halted, once again. President Obama recently signed the "doc fix" legislation (HR 4302) to delay scheduled cuts to Medicare physician reimbursement rates. The bill also pushes back the ICD-10 compliance date until at least October 2015, further delaying the switch from ICD-9 to ICD-10, which was endorsed by the Forty-third World Health Assembly in May 1990 and released to WHO member states 20 years ago in 1994. The switch to ICD-10 means that health care providers and insurers will have to replace 14,000 codes with 69,000 codes.