I had an interesting conversation last week that I've been trying to process.
It was with a therapist who I'm supporting, and they said it was ok to share this thread and its contents.
I'm going to call them Sam, because I tried writing this saying 'they' the whole time and I kept on getting confused. I have also changed a couple of minor details to preserve anonymity.
When we last met, Sam poured out a load of heartache about their health, their family's health, and their friends' health.
We have a group of lovely birthing groups and parenting groups that use some of our building regularly, and I get to chat to them - women who are pregnant and women who have young babies.
They are *in a bad way*.
In one of the expectant mothers groups, two of the nine had to stop work early due to complications in their pregnancies.
I sometimes hear things like that and wonder to myself if it is actually something that is becoming more common, or whether it's my imagination.
😮I want to smash something.
I've just stumbled across the official NHS coding guidance for U07.3 - 'Personal history of Covid-19' - and it left me on the floor.
🚨When paired with the data on the number of times it is currently used, it is a huge unknown national scandal.
The ICD-10 codes are the codes that are entered into NHS hospitals activity databases.
So when someone gets healthcare, it's for a reason, so they look up the code for that reason, and put the code into the database.
They're supposed to put this code, U07.3, into the databases when a past diagnosis of Covid (confirmed or probable) "influences the person's health status".