“Every time you go to the doctor, your diagnosis is recorded as a medical code. They’re notoriously complicated—more than 3,000 ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes are used just to describe physical injuries. There’s a five digit number for everything from “insect bite” to “animal-drawn vehicle accident.”
“In the past year, nearly 1 out of every 6 patients in our database were diagnosed with a physical injury, so we thought it would be interesting to take a closer look.
“We grouped these injury codes and gave them common names (like “bruising” instead of 38 different kinds of “contusion”). Then, we looked at every injury diagnosis in our health insurance claims database from 2012 to 2016. (You can read more about our methodology below.)”
