More precision than strictly necessary?
Statisticians like precise information, but the new ICD10-CM codes for illness and injury perhaps go too far.
Suppose you’re out tramping in Otago and you get bitten by a kea, which flies off and then comes back for a second go. These are
- External causes of morbidity (codes V00-Y99)
- subcategory: Exposure to animate mechanical forces (codes W50-W64)
- subcategory: Contact with birds (W61)
- subcategory: W61.0 Contact with parrot
- subcategory: W61.01Bitten by parrot
and the two bites have different codes: W61.01XA (initial encounter), and W61.01XD (subsequent encounter). If it was a kakariki instead, the codes would be under W61.21(Bitten by other psittacines), but having a magpie dive into your head would just be the more general W61.92 (Struck by other birds).
[via: Ezra Klein]
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »