The 2017 ICD-10-CM is looking a bit more like ICD-9-CM thanks to the addition to some codes that were forgotten in the first release. As a heavy user of external cause codes and an ED coder at heart, I was so accustomed to using the E927 series that when ICD-10-CM came out I felt lost and forgotten. They may have forgotten the highly used code series; but fear not, they remembered them this year.
Read MoreLumbar spinal fusions are among the most challenging procedures to code, partly because the anatomy is difficult to conceptualize and due to the variety of approaches and combinations of procedures that can be done.
Let’s focus on fusion of the anterior column of the lumbar spine. That’s fusion of the joint (yes, the disc forms a “lower joint”) between the vertebral bodies. Whenever you see an “interbody fusion” you know you’re looking at an anterior column spinal fusion.
Read MoreSepsis – every coder’s best friend! Many of us have faced the challenge of reconciling the variations that exist in defining sepsis between ICD-9, ICD-10, providers as a group, and even amongst providers at a single hospital. Change is in the air.
The most traditional concept of sepsis is a bacterial infection of the blood (septicemia) and the havoc this wreaks on the body. Indeed ICD-9 and ICD-10 both fit best to this idea as the codes for sepsis are found squarely among the bacterial infectious disease codes. Of course ICD-10 arguably clarified the situation somewhat...
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