Quote:
Originally Posted by CantExplain
An insurance company is a bureaucracy. It is not capable of diagnosing patients. All it knows is paperwork. But if doctors and therapists all use a common diagnostic standard, then the insurance company can put every customer in a box.
Then when your doctor diagnoses you with X and prescribes treatment Y, the insurance company can look up X and Y and tell that your policy doesn't cover it. Another job well done.
Without the DSM, there would be no way to know what your policy does not cover.
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That's an interesting notion, but a lot of treatments- covered by insurance or not- are not referenced specifically in the DSM. The original intention of the DSM was to aid in diagnosis. I ideally, when there are specific diagnoses they are grouped according to symptoms and response to attempted treatment, as well as etiology.
Classification aids in treatment.
The insurance companies used diagnostic codes, yes... but there are also the diagnostic codes in the ICD10, for example that actually address all areas of health.
The purpose is not insurance, but aid in treatment, large scale management and documentation. The ICD is used in countries where "insurance" is either very different from places like the United States or it pretty much doesn't even function in a way that it can be considered for the majority of individuals.
The purpose of the DSM was never insurance.
Insurance takes advantage of diagnostic codes to make logic/decision trees based on fairly current research- little of which was actually implemented in the latest DSM.
The RDoC, with any luck, will also be considered legitimate by insurance as a system to diagnose. But its purpose is not to aid insurance or medical billing.