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Home Health ICD-9/ICD-10 Alert

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Use this Handy Tool to Learn Your Way around the ICD-10 Manual

Published on Sun Jan 21, 2001

These memory tricks will give your navigation a boost.

After years of using your ICD-9 manual, you know right where to look for the conditions you code most often. But when ICD-10 makes its debut, you'll need to learn your way around a whole new manual.

Each ICD-10 code begins with a letter and these letters indicate the tabular chapter from which the code comes. Use this humorous memory tool from Lisa Selman-Holman, JD, BSN, RN, HCS-D, COS-C, HCS-O, consultant and principal of Selman-Holman & Associates and CoDR -- Coding Done Right in Denton, Texas to begin familiarizing yourself with ICD-10's organization.

  • A & B -- Infectious and Parasitic Diseases = Anti-Biotics
  • C -- Neoplasms = Cancer
  • D -- Neoplasms and Blood and Blood-Forming Organs = More Neoplasms and Deficiencies
  • E -- Endocrine, Nutritional, and Metabolic
  • F -- Mental and Behavior Disorders = Freud
  • G -- Nervous System = Golly! makes you nervous.
  • H -- Eye and Adnexa, Ear and Mastoid Process = Hearing
  • I -- Circulatory System = Ischemia
  • J -- Respiratory System = Take a deep breath before you Jump
  • K -- Digestive System = Special K (fiber is good for your digestive system)
  • L -- Skin and Subcutaneous = Lovely skin
  • M -- Musculoskeletal
  • N -- Genitourinary = Naughty parts
  • O -- Pregnancy, Childbirth and Puerperium = Obstetrics
  • P -- Perinatal Period
  • Q -- Congenital Malformations, Deformations and Chromosomal Abnormalities = Quite difficult conditions
  • R -- Symptoms, Signs and Abnormal Clinical and Laboratory Findings = Should be coded Rarely
  • S & T -- Injury, Poisoning and Certain Other Consequences of External Causes = Strychnine and Trauma
  • V, W, X, Y -- External Causes of Morbidity= Victims
  • Z -- Factors Influencing Health Status and Contact with Health Services = Codes of last resort.

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