ICD 10 Coding Alert

Question: We treated a coronavirus patient in the hospital and he later went home after recovering from the disease. He came to our practice for a follow-up, complaining of a feeling of being constantly tired, and the clinician diagnosed him with low iron levels and generalized weakness. Do we use the COVID-19 code for this visit?

California Subscriber

Answer: No, if the patient no longer has an active case of COVID-19, you should not report U07.1. Instead, you’ll report the codes for the diagnoses the clinician addressed, as well as the appropriate “Z” codes to represent the history of coronavirus. Therefore, your coding would appear as follows:

• E61.1 (Iron deficiency)
• R53.1 (Weakness)
• Z09 (Encounter for follow-up examination after completed treatment for conditions other than malignant neoplasm)
• Z86.19 (Personal history of other infectious and parasitic diseases)

The American Hospital Association’s (AHA’s) “Frequently-Asked Questions Regarding ICD-10-CM Coding for COVID-19” advises practices to report these two Z codes “when a patient who previously had COVID-19 is seen for a follow-up exam and the COVID-19 test is negative.” These two codes should be sequenced after the conditions that the clinician actually treated, which in this case puts them in the third and fourth positions.