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Home Health & Hospice Week

Coding How-To:

Simplify Complicated Surgical Wound Coding

Published on Tue Aug 04, 2009

Watch V code use with complications. Your patient's surgical wound may be complicated, but coding for it doesn't have to be. Follow three simple steps to make sure you're accurately reporting all the care your agency provides. 1. Know when it's complicated. A complication is a problem that arises during the healing process of the initial surgical procedure which negatively impacts healing, says Judy Adams, president and CEO of Adams Home Care Consulting in Chapel Hill, N.C. For example, an infected surgical wound is considered complicated. Tip: There's no time limit to coding a surgical wound as complicated, Adams says. Even if the complication arises some time after surgery, you can still code for the wound as complicated. 2. Find the right code. Look under "Complication" in the alphabetic index of your coding manual to begin your search, Adams says. Then verify the code in the tabular list, and follow [...]
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