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General Surgery Coding Alert

ICD-9 2012:

539: Quit Using 997.4 for Bariatric Surgery Complications

Published on Mon Jul 18, 2011

Update skin cancer dx and more with CMS's final proposed change to ICD-9-CM code set.General surgery practices will need to know four new codes to report complications of gastric band or bariatric procedures beginning Oct. 1 if the proposed ICD-9 codes become final. You'll find 539.xx (Complications of bariatric surgery and gastric band procedures) and other new, invalid, and revised codes that will impact your practice recently posted on the CMS Website.Capture Bariatric Infection, Other ComplicationsBariatric surgery or gastric band procedure complications are currently indexed to 997.4 (Digestive system complications). "This is a case where we simply index the complication to a generic code ... and we actually don't have any secondary code to use," noted National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)'s Amy Blum at the ICD-9-CM Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting (proposals, summaries, and presentation slides available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/icd/icd9cm_maintenance.htm). All that will change Oct. 1, 2011 if the [...]
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