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External Cause of Injury Code (ECIC) Committee Description | Scope of Activities | Deliverables | Founded | Minutes
The External Cause of Injury Code (ECIC) Committee promotes the collection and reporting of standardized external cause of injury codes by health care providers. External cause of injury codes can be used by public health practitioners and public health researchers for surveillance, epidemiologic, health care cost containment and research purposes. External cause of injury coding provides a framework for systematically collecting population-based information needed to fully describe and document how and where an injury occurred (mechanism, activity and place of occurrence). External cause of injury codes are important for injury surveillance and for designing, implementing and monitoring injury prevention and control programs, i.e., domestic violence, workplace injury, motor vehicle crashes, and other intentional and unintentional injuries. External cause of injury codes can also be used by the health care insurance industry for health care cost containment purposes. The Healthy People 2010 states that more than 400 Americans die each day due primarily to motor vehicle crashes, firearms, poisonings, suffocation, falls, fires, and drowning. The cost of injury and violence in the United States is estimated at more than $224 billion per year. National objectives have been set to measure progress on injury and violence prevention and control. However, monitoring the progress on achieving these objectives will not be possible without external cause of injury codes. Unfortunately, although surveillance of injuries and their causes using external cause of injury codes provides the most reliable information for public health programs aimed to prevent and control injuries and their consequences, a systematic and standardized collection and use of this information is lacking in several states. ECIC has collaborated with the National Uniform Billing Committee (NUBC) representatives in the preparation of a Data Maintenance (DM) request to X-12, asking that ICD-10-CM (clinical modification) and ICD-10-PCS (procedure coding system) be added as sources for external cause of injury (codes) information. The request was approved by X-12. This is an important step because ICD-10-CM requires three codes to completely document an injury (mechanism, activity and place of injury). Plans are now to identify and propose changes to the X-12 837 guides to provide the ability to utilize ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes within the guides and capture additional external cause of injury codes. Moreover, ECIC is in the process of developing a plan to inform public health practitioners and public health researchers about the multiple benefits that can be obtained by using external cause of injury codes. As a first step, the committee is coordinating efforts with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), the National Association of Health Data Organizations (NAHDO), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and other interested organizations to develop a matrix depicting the different surveys (inventories) that are being conducted regarding the collection and use of external cause of injury codes. These organizations plan to use the results for different purposes. ECIC will use the results to formulate an educational plan to improve the reporting by healthcare providers and promote the use of the external cause of injury codes by public health researchers and public health practitioners. March 21, 2000 October 5, 2006 (no minutes available) See Information on Past ECIC Activities.
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Chair Starla Ledbetter, MHSA, RHIA, PMP |
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