General Surgery Coding Alert

Make room for complications when reporting ulcerative colitis — that’s the future of reporting these conditions when ICD-10 goes into effect Oct. 1, 2015. 

 

Learn the No-Complication Crosswalks

 

Without considering complications, you can see from the following list that the crosswalk from ICD-9 to ICD-10 is fairly straightforward for ulcerative colitis:

Complications Multiply Choices

 

You won’t get the whole story for ICD-10 ulcerative colitis coding until you learn the fifth and sixth digit options. For each code, a fifth digit of 1 instead of 0 indicates the same condition, except with complications. Then you need to know the sixth digit designations, which report specific complications as follows:

 

1 — with rectal bleeding

2 — with intestinal obstruction

3 — with fistula

4 — with abscess

8 — with other complication

9 — with unspecified complications.

 

For instance: Under ICD-9, you would report universal ulcerative colitis with rectal bleeding as 556.6. But the same condition under ICD-10 becomes K51.011 (Ulcerative [chronic] pancolitis with rectal bleeding).