Podiatry Coding & Billing Alert

Question: According to the medical documentation, the patient has a healing non-pressure chronic ulcer of the right ankle. However, this is all of the information my podiatrist provided. Which ICD-10-CM code should I report?

California Subscriber

Answer: You should report L97.319 (Non-pressure chronic ulcer of right ankle with unspecified severity).

Since your podiatrist’s medical documentation did not provide information about the severity of the patient’s healing non-pressure chronic ulcer, you should instead report the appropriate code for unspecified severity.