Question: Our practitioner saw a new patient for postnasal drip and difficulty breathing through their nose. The patient was a former heavy smoker but was able to quit several years ago. The office/outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) service lasted 41 minutes [...]
There’s more to the condition than coding J02.-. Pharyngitis coding seems basic on the surface. When a patient sees your otolaryngologist for a sore throat, you turn to J02.- (Acute pharyngitis) and select the appropriate code from the four subcategories [...]
Question: I work at a family medicine practice and our providers see patients with asthma. When I’m coding asthma, the diagnosis codes want specificity. If their provider doesn’t specifically mention whether the asthma is extrinsic or intrinsic, what other clues [...]
Question: Smoking and tobacco use cessation counseling services require an appropriate diagnosis code, but what if the patient isn’t presenting symptoms of tobacco-related diseases? What diagnosis code do you report? Arkansas Subscriber Answer: If a patient comes in for help with smoking [...]
Learn the right way to code metastatic cancers. If you’re new to coding cancers of the head and neck, the ICD-10 Table of Neoplasms can be confusing to use at first. And if you’re a seasoned pro, there’s a chance [...]
Choose different codes for atherosclerosis of bypass grafts vs. native arteries. If you find peripheral artery disease (PAD) and peripheral vascular disease (PVD) coding confusing, you’re not alone. Read on for some helpful insight on how best to maneuver this [...]
Question: A new patient reports to the neurologist with head tilt to the left and eye deviation (eyes are not symmetrical on the patient’s face). After an evaluation and management (E/M) service that involves moderate medical decision making (MDM), the physician [...]
Pay attention to parent code notes. Several conditions in the ICD-10-CM code set are classified as acute or chronic. Pulmonary edema is one such ailment, and knowing how to code the illness as well as associated risk factors can help [...]
Also: see which Z codes could apply to your claim. Bronchitis is a common condition, and one that primary care practices see often. When the physician describes the condition as “simple,” sometimes the condition is anything but. For example, how [...]
See if you caught the right codes for this common pneumonia. Coders had ample warning that the J code category of ICD-10-CM code set would see a lot of changes, but now you have an opportunity to see how you [...]
