Inpatient Facility Coding & Compliance Alert

You Be the Coder:

Surgical Hierarchy Among MS-DRG 243 and 247

Published on Wed Sep 17, 2014

Question: If a patient with a major complication and comorbidity gets a permanent cardiac pacemaker implant and also undergoes percutaneous cardiovascular procedure with drug-eluting stent in the same stay, which MS-DRG should I assign to him?

Texas Subscriber

Answer: When a provider performs more than one procedure, you should assign the DRG that is highest according to the surgical hierarchy in the MDC (Major diagnostic categories). This patient falls into MDC 5; i.e. Diseases and disorders of the circulatory system. In this case, The MS-DRG 242 (Permanent cardiac pacemaker implant with MCC) is higher up the surgical hierarchy than the MS-DRG 247(Percutaneous cardiovascular procedure with drug-eluting stent without MCC). Therefore, you should group him into MS-DRG 242.

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You Be the Coder:
Surgical Hierarchy Among MS-DRG 243 and 247
Question: If a patient with a major complication and comorbidity gets a permanent cardiac pacemaker implant [...]

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