Posted on Friday, August 19, 2016 4:48 PM
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), have outlined the official coding guidelines for FY2017 (October 1, 2016 – September 30, 2017).
The following coding guidelines were posted August 5, confirming the relationship between two conditions linked by the term “with” in the Alphabetic Index or Tabular List:
• These conditions should be coded as related even without provider documentation directly linking them, unless the documentation clearly states the conditions are unrelated
• For conditions not linked by the relational terms in the classification, provider documentation must link the conditions in order to code them as related
• Furthermore, the classification presumes a causal relationship between hypertension and heart involvement and between hypertension and kidney involvement, as the two conditions are linked by the term “with” in the Alphabetic Index
• These conditions should be coded as related even without physician documentation, unless the documentation clearly states the conditions are unrelated, the coding guidelines state
• For hypertension and conditions not specifically linked by relational terms such as “with,” “associated with” or “due to” in the classification, provider documentation must link the conditions in order to code them as related
Click here for the 2017 coding guidelines.
Corridor’s Coding Services offers ICD-10 coding, multi-level OASIS reviews, Clinician documentation review, as well as trends and reporting. Contact us to learn more.
For the full article, please see the August 22, 2016 Home Health Line Edition.
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