CODING CORNER: Your Diabetes Coding Will Become More Accurate in Late 2008

New codes will distinguish between disease- and drug-related diabetes

Hang in there: The long-awaited new ICD-9 codes for secondary diabetes will have to wait until the 2009 update.

Secondary diabetes will receive its own category in   ICD-9 2009, Sheri Bernard, CPC, CPC-H, CPC-P, clinical staff member at Ingenix, said at the American Academy of Professional Coders 2007 national conference in Seattle.

Moreover, the subcategories for complications will mirror those for the existing 250.xx series of diabetes codes--which means coders will have lots of new codes to work with.

These codes should take effect Oct. 1, 2008, if all goes well, says Amy Blum, medical classification specialist with the National Center for Health Statistics, the part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that develops new ICD-9 codes.

“We’re going to bring [the proposal] back to the September meeting” of the ICD-9 Coordi-nation and Maintenance Committee, Blum says. This will be approximately the fifth time the committee has considered secondary diabetes codes, she adds.

The CDC will propose two new categories for secondary diabetes, based on the disease cause, in 2009: 248.xx and 249.xx. One is for diabetes due to an existing condition, and the other is for diabetes due to a drug. This plan goes along with comments on the CDC’s previous proposal, Blum says.

- Published on 2007-07-12