“In December 2010, the minister of health agreed . . . that doctors’ diagnostic billing codes listing sexual orientation under mental illness was unacceptable,” Liberal Laurie Blakeman said in the provincial legislature this week.
“But those billing codes are in use in exactly the same place and say the same things today.”
In 2010, the last year for which figures are available, doctors billed the province for treating homosexuality as a mental disorder five times.
The province has known about the outdated classification for more than a decade and the government first promised to change it in 1998.
The issue was revived in December 2010 when human rights activist Rob Wells released government records showing doctors used the diagnostic code to bill the province for treating gays and lesbians more than 1,750 times between 1995 and 2004.
“It has no place in Alberta,” former Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky said at the time. “It is simply an incorrect and unacceptable classification and I’ve ordered it to be removed immediately.”
The offending language was removed from the online version of the government’s diagnostic codes in 2010, but the code itself remains in use, Alberta Health spokeswoman Kathleen Range confirmed Friday.
“It’s diagnostic code, it’s not a billing code, they’re two different things,” Range said. “The doctors bill us according to the schedule of medical benefits and they use the international diagnostic codes with that billing information.”
Alberta uses the ninth version of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, which was written in 1975 and is known as the ICD-9. The code was updated in 1990, and the newer ICD-10 does not list homosexuality as a mental disorder.
“We also have the Alberta Health and Wellness Diagnostic codes, which is Alberta’s version of that. It does not include the language which is obviously outdated and offensive,” said Range.
“That has been removed. But Alberta can’t on its own change what other jurisdictions are using, so we still use that coding system.”
Alberta won’t move to adopt the new ICD-10 until other provinces do, for the sake of administrative efficiency, Range said. Alberta doctors bill the province for $2.8 billion each year and other provinces submit $100 million in “reciprocal billing” annually. All of the reciprocal billing would have to be hand-coded if the province adopted the ICD-10, she said.
“When other jurisdictions do make that move, of course we’ll follow suit,” Range said.
Health Minister Fred Horne said in the legislature Wednesday he will look into the matter.
“Simply changing where the billing codes are publicly available does not address the issue that she has raised,” Horne said in the legislature. “I’d be pleased to look into it.”
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Karen Kleiss
No comments:
Post a Comment