Tuesday, October 11, 2011

ICD-9 2012: Now 425.1 Will Fetch you Denials – Immediately!

The ICD-9 2012 codes went into effect on October 1 this year. But are you up to date with the list of ICD-9 codes for 2012? Read on and get more insight.

Coronary atherosclerosis and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were late additions in ICD-9 2012. Here are some ICD-9 2012 changes you need to heed to. This year's codeset has added 414.4 (it helps single out coronary lesions) after a proposal for a unique code for severely calcified coronary lesions came to the fore. The idea behind the proposal was to be able to distinguish a calcified lesion from other ischemic lesions. Calcified lesions are not the same as lipid rich plaque and chronic total occlusions. Code 414.8 is too general to identify the nature of the lesion.

Now ICD-9 2012 features new coding choices for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, from October 1, 2011. This is because Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy can have two levels of manifestation - obstructive or nonobstructive. Whether it is obstructive or not, can have a say on the need for different medical or surgical treatments.

Previously, under ICD-9 2011, 425.1 was a valid code (Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy). If you required to report nonobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, you used 425.4. Now, the update revises 425.1 so that it's no longer a valid code – you must add a fifth digit for it to be valid: 425.11, 425.18.

These ICD-9 changes give you one code for hypertrophic obstructive (425.11) and one more for other hypertrophic, including nonobstructive (425.18). In order to conform with the changes to the 425.1x range, ICD-9 deletes the terms "hypertrophic" and "nonobstructive" from under 425.4.

For the entire ICD-9 codes list , final revisions and for other ICD-9 code 2012 changes, sign up for a good coding resource like SuperCoder.

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