The ICD-9-CM system was designated as the national standard in a final rule in the Federal Register on August 17, 2000 (65 FR 50311) following notice and comment rulemaking in accordance with Public Law 104-191. 

In that same final rule, the public was advised that there would be a need in the near future to replace this dated coding system with a system that could better capture today's health care information. At that time, work was proceeding on an updated variant of the ICD system, ICD-10, that could replace ICD-9-CM, but this system was not yet completed. The World Health Organization developed ICD-10 as an international diagnosis coding system. NCHS has been modifying ICD-10 to replace the diagnosis section of ICD-9-CM. This system is being referred to as ICD-10-CM. At the same time, HCFA has been developing the ICD-10-Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) as a possible replacement for the ICD-9-CM procedure codes. 

Criteria for the development of a new procedure coding system were established by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS). The criteria included the following:

• Completeness - all substantially different procedures have a unique code.
• Expandability - the structure of the system allows incorporation of new procedures and technologies as unique codes. 
• Standardized terminology - the coding system includes definitions of the terminology used. While the meaning of the specific words can vary in common usage, the coding scheme does not include multiple meanings for the same term. Each term is assigned a specific meaning. 
• Multiaxial - the system has a multiaxial structure with each code character having the same meaning within the specific procedure section and across procedure sections to the extent possible. 
• Diagnostic information is not included in the procedure description. 

The ICD-10-PCS was developed using these criteria by HCFA through a contract with 3M Health Information Systems. The ICD-10-PCS system provides much greater code capacity because all substantially different procedures have a unique code. While the ICD-9-CM procedure coding system is limited to a maximum of 10,000 codes, the current draft of ICD-10-PCS contains 197,769 codes and the number could be expanded further.