Home Health ICD-9/ICD-10 Alert

According to the introduction to Chapter 16 of the ICD-9 coding manual, you should report a symptom code for (1) cases for which no more specific diagnosis can be made even after all facts bearing on the case have been investigated; (2) signs or symptoms existing at the time of initial encounter that proved to be transient and whose causes could not be determined; (3) provisional diagnoses for patients who failed to return for further care; (4) cases referred elsewhere for treatment before a diagnosis could be made; (5) cases in which a more precise diagnosis was not available for any other reason; (6) certain symptoms which represent important problems in medical care and which it might be desired to classify in addition to a known cause. Symptoms should not be used when integral to a condition.