Hi
annettebec,
I so do apologize for not replying earlier. But in my wholehearted opinion the Neuroendocrine Tumors are NOT CLEARLY DEFINED in our ICD book and haven't been for a long while. I am sure my pathologists are simply tired of my repeated requests for clarification and that my colleagues are also probably querying the heck out of their pathologists on these coding scenarios too.
Something needs to be done; and to frankly (again in my opinion) clear the "mud" on these coding scenarios. Our ICD book in a sense seems like a dinosaur and is "outdated" for our current coding scenarios. Even medical necessity is out the door checking the guidelines using the majority of these
diagnosis codes.
I referred to a few resources when reviewing to your specific coding scenario. I am not in a position to provide accurate diagnosis coding assignment suggestion because I don't have enough quality evidence to again "clear the mud" and give you the proper code selection or advice that you need for proper
diagnosis code assignment, but I wanted to leave you with a few things I found alright. I will need to leave this to your interpretation of the pathology report to render the correct diagnosis on this one. I used multiple sites I have personally book marked, but in my opinion the cancer.org and SEER website are my favorite go to websites.
What Is a Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor?
SEER Inquiry System - Search
Please let me know if my copy and paste links did not work correctly. You may want to bookmark them and use them moving forward in your pathology coding career if you find them helpful? I really did attempt to Snip and paste them into our discussion, but both websites were unhappy with that idea.
If anyone disagrees with my "opinion(s)", I would like you to share your otherwise reasoning or disagreements please. I seriously have been hoping that the WHO would figure this out for a while now. This is long overdue "again in my complete opinion".
Have a fantastic evening please!
Thank you for listening,
Dana Chock, CPC, CANPC, CHONC, CPMA, CPB, RHIT