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Hit by a flying saucer? Here's your medical billing code

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


If you're ever injured on a spacecraft, don't worry: hospitals already have a code to enter on your chart—it's ICD-E845.0. Unless, that is, you happened to be weightless at the time. That's E928.0. Prompted by a random tidbit making the rounds on medical blogs, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog dug up some context:

ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes are the basic international health codes that exist for just about everything (as this spaceship thing suggests). They’re used both for billing purposes and for tracking trends in public health.

It turns out that just about everything has a code, from bite of a non-venomous arthropod (E906.4) to accident by paintball gun (E922.5). There's a bunch of codes for injuries from terrorist attacks, of course. Check this CDC page for an annotated list.


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