I might a naive German, but if people actually get treated for Lyme disease without a test, shouldn’t the doctor bill the treatment through some ICD code to healthcare insurance? In that case the insurance companies should have the good data of how many people get treated for lyme disease.
Is this something about the US healthcare system that makes this hard?
Yes, this should be possible, and MA does it internally:
Tick-borne Disease Visit: International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10) query of the first three diagnostic codes assigned to the ED visit for: Lyme disease (A69.2), babesiosis (B60.0), anaplasmosis (A77.49), and other tick-borne diseases (A68.1, A68.9, A77.40, and A93.8).
Not sure—treatment for Lyme (if caught early) is just antibiotics, and there might not be a Lyme-specific office visit code. So it might just show up in billing records as:
1 Office Visit (these are coded with levels of complexity but not with specific patient complaints/diagnoses IIRC).
0-2 days later, 1 prescription fill for a standard course of some generic antibiotic.
I might a naive German, but if people actually get treated for Lyme disease without a test, shouldn’t the doctor bill the treatment through some ICD code to healthcare insurance? In that case the insurance companies should have the good data of how many people get treated for lyme disease.
Is this something about the US healthcare system that makes this hard?
Yes, this should be possible, and MA does it internally:
See reports at https://www.mass.gov/lists/monthly-tickborne-disease-reports
Not sure—treatment for Lyme (if caught early) is just antibiotics, and there might not be a Lyme-specific office visit code. So it might just show up in billing records as:
1 Office Visit (these are coded with levels of complexity but not with specific patient complaints/diagnoses IIRC).
0-2 days later, 1 prescription fill for a standard course of some generic antibiotic.