Oncology & Hematology Coding Alert

Question: Our physician is treating a pregnant woman with chemotherapy. This is clearly use of a high-risk medication. Is there a potential ICD-10-CM code for high-risk medication during pregnancy?

Massachusetts Subscriber

Answer: You need to check the clinical record for the details of chemotherapy used in the pregnant patient. This will allow you to pick up a Z code to indicate the drug used. If you fail to find the specific chemotherapy drug, you may consider submitting the “generic” code of Z79.899 (Other long term [current] drug therapy).

For the primary code, you can consider the following:

• Code O09.89 (Supervision of other high risk pregnancies) for supervision of high-risk pregnancy.
• Code O35.5- (Maternal care for [suspected] damage to fetus by drugs) for potential damage to fetus.