# HELP PLEASE! How to code delayed healing of wound due to open fracture



## LLBS29XX (Jul 19, 2016)

I am not good at coding wound care I will admit!  I have a patient that had an open fracture of the femur, had fracture fixed, with repeated I&D in stages with completion of adding and removal of external hardware and then final adding of wound vac for delayed healing. Home Health has picked him up for the wound care. I am using S81.801A Unspecified open wound right lower leg "D" per hospital but they have added T81.89XA "Other complications of procedure, not elsewhere classified" and I think there must be a better code. Can anyone help me please? Thanks so much for your expert opinions!


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## JMarieBrandt (Aug 4, 2016)

That T81.89XA is ICD-10's version of a non-healing surgical wound. If that's how the MD is describing it, than that will be the correct code. The unspecified wound code wont be used in this instance. But if the patient has had multiple I&Ds i wonder if non-healing wound would be best, too. You'd want to find out if there has been any sort of infection, and if it is still being treated for an infection. And if there is a wound vac, make sure the MD didn't document it as dehised.


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