Primary Care Coding Alert

ICD-10 streamlines to single diagnosis. Many diagnoses will expand to multiple options with ICD-10 in October 2013, but that's not always the case. Essential hypertension is one diagnosis your family physician might report that will actually have fewer choices with ICD-10. Currently: ICD-9 2011 includes three diagnosis options for essential hypertension: 401.0 -- Essential hypertension; malignant 401.1 -- ... benign 401.9 -- ... unspecified. ICD-10, however, includes only a single code for essential hypertension: I10 (Essential [primary] hypertension). Bonus: Eliminating multiple diagnoses eliminates the problem of being forced to choose the "unspecified" code when documentation fails to indicate "benign" or "malignant." Additional: When ICD-10 goes into effect, you'll need to keep an eye on documentation for tobacco exposure. ICD-10 includes an instruction to "Use additional code to identify" conditions including: Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (Z77.22) History of tobacco use (Z87.891) Occupational exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (Z57.31) Tobacco dependence (F17.-) Tobacco use [...]