Disease coding

03 November 2015

Q. Our practice wants to improve our coding of diseases in our GP software system; does GPIT recommend using ICD 10 codes or ICPC-2 code system?

A. For coding of common diseases in general practice, ICPC-2 is sufficient. If you are getting down to very granular levels of detail or involved in a specific area of research, then you will need the finer detail of ICD 10. Here are the ICPC-2 codes for some common diseases:

There are resources available on the GPIT website to assist with disease coding. Go to www.gpit.ie and look at the 'How To' leaflets for a description of how to code a disease and retrieve patients with that disease in the software systems. And if you look under 'Publications & Reports' you will find a two-page, colour-coded list of ICPC-2 codes.