His Excellency the Deputy Minister of Health for Planning and Development, and Chairman of the Supervisory Committee for the Application of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Dr. Mohammed Khoshaim, has inaugurated a training course on the Australian 10th Revision of the Classification (ICD-10-AM ACHI/ACS) which has been adopted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after approved by the Saudi Council of Health Services (CHS). The course, organized by the MOH Medical Coding Unit, is held in Riyadh, from June 23rd, to July 4th, 2012.
Dr. Khosahim was quoted as saying, “This course comes within the framework of the strenuous efforts exerted by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in an endeavor to improve the health services provided for the beneficiaries of its hospitals and health services. In the course of this year, four transitional training courses from former classifications (e.g. ICD9) to the currently adopted classification (ICD-10-AM) have been organized. This last classification has been very well formulated, making optimal use of the scholarship programs in the field of medical records, currently known as health information management, as well as the ICD-10 Train the Trainer Program, organized by the National Centre for Health Research and Training at Queensland University of Technology, in Australia. The MOH coding team has been trained by a team accredited by the WHO Family of International Classifications (WHO – FIC).”
He went on to say, “This course comes as an episode of the first stage of a series of specialized training courses and workshops meant to train hundreds of the MOH technicians working at medical records departments on the application of the standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO) through the ICD-10, which have to do with diseases only. The Australian revision (ICD-10-AM) includes, beside diseases, certain codes for health interventions, such as surgical and diagnostic operations (such as magnetic resonance imaging – MRI, and anesthesia).
It is worth mentioning that participants of both genders are very precisely chosen. Only those with prior knowledge of medical terminology have been nominated (125 participants). They have been trained on the application of the Australian Coding Standards (ACS). They will be applied in all hospitals and health centers with the aim to compare the local benchmarking, in a way that helps evaluate the performance and planning of health services.
A considerable number of MOH hospitals, those which have their employees trained, have already opened “coding units” at their medical records departments immediately after such courses. The Ministry of Health, for its part, has provided for health coding trainees the books published by the National Casemix and Classification Centre (NCCC), at University of Wollongong, Australia, so as to be disseminated to participants, and applied in all MOH hospitals and health centers thereafter.