Pediatric Coding Alert

When weighing an infant is too risky, support 99478-99480 with these steps. If you're bundling resuscitation with initial intensive care, jumping from normal newborn codes to subsequent critical or intensive care, or omitting weight from subsequent intensive care (SIC) notes, your inpatient coding needs a checkup. Fix 1: Watch for Rx Absent SIC Weight A show of hands at the recent Multi-Specialty National Coding and Reimbursement Conference in Orlando revealed that the majority of coders were not seeing a weight statistic per day on subsequent intensive care charts. "Flipping back a day or days in the chart to code based on the infant's last recorded weight is inappropriate," warned Jill M. Young, CPC, CPC-ED, CPC-IM, with Young Medical Consulting, LLC, in East Lansing, Mich. Why: You choose subsequent intensive care (SIC) codes (99478-99480, Subsequent intensive care, per day, for the evaluation and management of the recovering ... infant [present body [...]