Home Health ICD-9/ICD-10 Alert

Remember to list an additional code to describe the infection.

The codes you report for infected surgical wounds will change when ICD-9 becomes ICD-10, but the logic you use to find them will not.

For example: When providing care for a patient’s infected surgical wound, you currently report 998.59 (Other postoperative infection).

ICD-10: When you make the switch to ICD-10, you’ll report infected surgical wounds with T81.4xxD (Infection following a procedure; subsequent encounter). The seventh character "D" indicates that this is a subsequent encounter following the active phase of treatment and the patient is receiving routine care.

List additional code: In both systems, you should also list a code to identify the infection, such as 041.12 (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in ICD-9 or B95.62 (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection as the cause of diseases classified elsewhere) in ICD-10.

And, just as in ICD-9, you’ll list a more specific code when you have more detailed information about the infected wound you’re coding in ICD-10.

For example: ICD-9 code 996.66 (Infection and inflammatory reaction due to internal prosthetic device, implant and graft; due to internal joint prosthesis) will be replaced with ICD-10 code T84.5-xD (Infection and inflammatory reaction due to internal joint prosthesis, subsequent encounter) with the fifth character to describe the specific joint affected and a D to indicate subsequent encounter as the seventh character.