Wiki Sepsis - I don't have

[veganess]

Hi,

I don't have much experience coding sepsis, but have read the notes in ICD-9 on it. The problem I'm having is, the physician I'm coding for (remotely) assessed sepsis as the primary diagnosis - with no mention of the infection type. Is there an unknown infection code, or what would you do? Thanks in advance.

 

[mitchellde]

If you read the coding guidelines on sepsis, they tell you that if the provider documents sepsis with no documentation of the organism, then you code 038.9 first listed. Read the coding guidelines in the front of your codebook, it is very comprehensive in the area of sepsis.