Patients can use medical codes to learn more about their diagnosis, the services their practitioner has provided, figure out how much their providers were paid, or even to double-check their billing from either their providers or their insurance or payer. Learn more about these medical coding systems.

Patients may be interested in looking at CPT codes to better understand the services their doctor provided, to double-check their bills, or negotiate lower pricing for their healthcare services.

There are two levels:

Level I HCPCS codes mirror CPT codes and are used to identify medical services and procedures ordered by physicians or other licensed professionals. Level II HCPCS codes are alphanumeric and identify non-physician services like ambulance rides, wheelchairs, walkers, other durable medical equipment, and other medical services that don’t fit readily into Level I.

ICD codes change over time, so they have a number appended to them to show which set of codes is being used. Introduced in the late 1970s, the ICD-9 code set was replaced by the more detailed ICD-10 code set on October 1, 2015. 

This means that hospitals are paid a fixed rate for inpatient services corresponding to the DRG assigned to a given patient, regardless of what the real cost of the hospital stay was, or what the hospital bills the insurance company (or Medicare) for.

The assumption is made that patients that fit the same profile will need approximately the same care and services. There are about 500 different DRGs. They are updated annually to add new diagnoses or circumstances.

The first segment identifies the product labeler (manufacturer, marketer, repackager, or distributor of the product). The second segment identifies the product itself (drug-specific strength, dosage form, and formulation). The third segment identifies the package size and type.

It should be noted that just because the number is assigned, that does not mean the drug has been approved by the FDA. The FDA publishes a list of NDC codes in the NDC Directory which is updated daily.

While you may see these codes in existing patient records, the fifth edition of the DSM was published in 2013 and recommends ICD-10 codes for psychiatric conditions. These also change over time, as there was a revision in October​ 2017.