On Oct. 1, health care organizations nationwide switched from the ICD-9 billing code system to the more detailed ICD-10. Not only was Johns Hopkins Medicine ready, but most doctors were expected to barely notice the change because they already had begun providing more detailed documentation within the Epic electronic medical record system, says M. Tyrone Whitted, interim senior director of compliance and training in the Office of Billing Quality Assurance. Epic helps walk clinicians through the new coding.

One goal of ICD-10 is to provide a different code for every imaginable injury; there are nearly 70,000 codes in all. The codes add such details as whether the diagnosed injury or ailment is on the patient’s right or left side and how it is progressing over time.

“That level of specificity is going to make it easier for us to do public health, research and financial analysis,” says Jennifer Parks, director of clinical integration in the Office of Johns Hopkins Physicians.