ICD-10:
Your Leukorrhea Code Will Become a General One in 2013
Published on Mon Nov 07, 2011
Don't overlook these Excludes1 notes. If a patient has leukorrhea, she has whitish, yellowish, or greenish discharge from the vagina. The discharge can be normal or the sign of an infection.Right now, you should report this condition with 623.5 (Leukorrhea not specified as infective). When you switch to ICD-10 in October 2013, you should report N98.8 (Other specified noninflammatory disorders of vagina) instead. These two codes have a one-to-one correlation, but you should examine how the descriptors differ. Documentation: You should turn to code N89.8 when the provider documents leukorrhea. If your provider documents leukorrhea NOS, you'll still turn to N89.8 because this term appears as an explanatory term under N89.8.Here's how you will arrive at these codes from the Alphabetic Index (specific to vaginal discharge):Discharge (from)- vaginal N89.8Leukorrhea N89.8Coder tips: Underneath the N89- category, you will find an Excludes1 note that forbids you from reporting these codes with abnormal [...]
