Inpatient Facility Coding & Compliance Alert

Question: If I find that a common ICD-9 code that I used until September doesn’t have a direct crosswalk to ICD-10, am I allowed to use “other” or “other specified” codes in ICD-10?

Tennessee Subscriber

Answer: Now that all of us have entered into the ICD-10 era, you will see that not all codes in ICD-9 have a direct crosswalk to ICD-10 codes.

That doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically select an “other” or “other specified” code for the condition, however. It may be that ICD-10 provides multiple codes that provide more granularity for reporting the condition you’ve commonly reported with a single code in ICD-9. For instance, ICD-10 introduces laterality for specimen site, so a single ICD-9 code may now translate to several comparable codes for “right,” “left,” and “unspecified” sites.

You should reserve codes that state “other” or “other specified” for when the information in the medical record provides details for which a specific code does not exist. You should use “unspecified” codes when the information in the medical record is insufficient to assign a more specific code.