Effective Oct. 1, 2023, there are more than 433 diagnosis code changes, including 395 code additions, 25 deletions, and 13 code revisions. This brings us to a grand total of 78,000 diagnosis codes allowing for coding to the highest specificity possible. It is essential everyone involved in coding be educated regarding coding and documentation requirements.
Highlights of the Changes
Chapter 21 – Factors Influencing Health Status and Contact with Health Services (Z00-Z99) has new codes related to the Social Determinants of Health and their impact on children’s wellbeing. Five new codes were added to category Z62 to better identify problems related to upbringing and to better clarify the specific caregiver or situation the child is involved in. Also, there are four new family history codes to note family history of colonic polyps found in subcategory Z83.71-.
Chapter 20 – External Causes of Morbidity (V00-Y99) has one of the most interesting updates for this year with a new category, W44- Foreign body entering into or through a natural orifice, which has been added to identify more serious types of foreign bodies entering the body. The American Academy of Pediatrics required this addition and as result 121 new codes were added to specifically identify the type of foreign body and the location in the body.
Chapter 18 – Symptoms, Signs and Abnormal Clinical and Laboratory Findings (R00-R99) now has new breast imaging reporting and data symptom codes. These new codes describe the density of the breast tissue and a new subcategory R932.3 has been created to capture the distinct types of breast density found during mammograms.
Chapter 9- Diseases of the Circulatory System (I00-I99) includes a new code, I1A.0, added for resistant hypertension. The definition is where a patient’s blood pressure remains above goal despite concurrent use of at least three anti-hypertensive drugs of different pharmacological classes. Code first the type of existing hypertension such as essential hypertension (I10) or secondary hypertension (I15-).
Chapter 6 – Diseases of the Nervous System (G00-G99) has two notable changes requested by the Unified Parkinson’s Advocacy Council to enhance the tracking and the progression of this disease. The new codes, (G20.A- and G20.B-), will capture whether or not the patient experiences dyskinesia with or without motor fluctuations. Lastly, new codes in the G43.E subcategory for the chronic migraine with aura have been added to report if the migraine is non-intractable, intractable, and with or without status migrainosus.
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