Covid-19 Update: 2022 ICD-10-CM In response to the ongoing national emergency concerning COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is implementing 3 new diagnosis codes, Z28.310, Z28.311 and Z28.39, into the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM), for reporting COVID-19 vaccination status effective April[...]

New Chronic Condition Rule When Tallying Number of Problems To count a problem under medical decision making element 1, “Number and complexity of the problem/problems that the provider addresses during the patient visit,” the current provider must address it at the current visit — you may not count a problem managed by different provider, unless[...]

The New 2021 E/M Coding Guidelines The new 2021 E/M coding guidelines has been announced. You no longer must use patient history, examination, and medical decision making to choose the level of service, according to the new 2021 E/M coding guidelines. Instead, each code level simply requires “a medically appropriate history and/or examination.”   Then,[...]

The 2020 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule unpublished version released Nov 4, 2019, confirms that the E/M code changes take effect in 2021. Changes to E/M services will be significant — although the changes won’t take effect until 2021: For new patients, there will be four levels of E/M codes instead of five. The[...]

Report Lung J Code for EVALI Per ICD-10-CM Vaping Coding Guidance The aerosol inside of an e-cigarette that users inhale contains substances — such as nicotine, heavy metals, ultra-fine particles, and volatile organic compounds — that can cause harm, states the CDC. For patients documented with EVALI, you should assign specific codes related to specific[...]