Cardiology Coding Alert

Question: The patient has hypertension with both heart and kidney involvement. Which ICD-10 code should we report for this condition?

Ohio Subscriber

Answer: If the patient has both hypertensive kidney disease and hypertensive heart disease, you will report the appropriate codes from combination category I13- (Hypertensive heart and chronic kidney disease), according to the ICD-10 Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting. If the patient also experiences heart failure, you should report an additional code from I50- (Heart failure) to identify which type of heart failure.

Coding tip: For hypertensive heart and CKD, you will report a code from category N18- (Chronic kidney disease (CKD)) as a secondary code with the primary category I13- code to identify the stage of CKD the patient has.

Don't miss: The codes in category I13- are combination codes, which include hypertension, heart disease, and CKD, according to the guidelines.

The guidelines explain that if a patient has hypertension, heart disease, and CKD, you should report the correct code from category I13-, not the individual codes for hypertension, heart disease, and chronic kidney disease, or any options from I11- (Hypertensive heart disease) or I12- (Hypertensive chronic kidney disease).

If the patient experiences both acute renal failure and CKD, you must report an additional code for the acute renal failure, the guidelines add.