Begin the Beguine, or loosening up for some ICD-10 dance steps

Is it necessary to love big band jazz in order to properly understand the new ICD-10 coding? No, but it would certainly help with the fancy footwork involved.

The "Getting Paid" blog will address in coming posts what major changes to look for in specific chapters of ICD-10. In the meantime, we'll look at the new coding system's Conventions and Guidelines. These are all available for download on the CDC website.

First off, ICD-10-CM has 21 chapters, up from 17 in ICD-9-CM as codes for certain conditions either break off to form their own sections or get roped in with others. The V and E codes, which detail supplemental factors influencing a patient's health and the external causes of injury, will be incorporated in the main classification under ICD-10-CM. Meanwhile, diseases and conditions of the eyes and ears will get their own chapter, separated from their current home in the nervous system section.

Injuries will now be classified by site, and then by type. Postoperative complications have been moved to procedure-specific body system chapters. Also, some codes have been combined. For example, coding for type 1 diabetes mellitus with diabetic neuropathy will no longer require two codes (one for the diabetes and one for the neurological manifestation) but a single code of E10.21.

In ICD-10-CM, as with ICD-9-CM, notes and parenthetical instructions are still present. The manual will still use "code first" and "use additional code," as well as "includes" and "excludes" notes. Also remaining are "not otherwise specified (NOS)" and "not elsewhere classified (NEC)." The term "and" is interpreted to mean "and/or" when it appears in a code title within the tabular list. The word "with" is interpreted to mean "associated with" or "due to" when appearing in a code title.

On the other hand, certain symbols, such as the lozenge, section mark, and braces are disappearing. Instead, ICD-10 will use dashes at the end of a code to signal that it requires additional characters. One example is M84.47-, which could represent any fracture to an ankle, foot, or toe (M84.472 is a fractured left ankle). ICD-10 does two types of "exclude" notes to modify some codes. "Excludes 1" lists condition codes that can't be used at the same time as the primary code. "Excludes 2" notes conditions that are not part of the primary code but that a patient could present at the the same time, meaning that both codes being used together are acceptable.

The alphabetic index of ICD-10 is divided into two parts – the index to diseases and injuries and the index to external causes – while the type and format layout uses the same mechanics as ICD-9.  Morphology codes are no longer listed in the alphabetic index, and they no longer have a separate appendix in ICD-10.

As I said earlier, the tabular list is divided into 21 chapters. Some of the reclassifications of diseases to different chapters were done for better alignment.  Each chapter is then divided into subchapters that contain three characters and are similar to the ICD-9 foundations.  Each chapter in ICD-10 begins with a summary of the blocks and an overview of the categories within the chapter. Some of the subchapters are divided into even more specific subchapters. 

The takeaway? With all of the changes ahead with ICD-10, getting up to speed will likely be less of a graceful waltz and more of a frantic jitterbug. But the AAFP is here to help you get through it.

–Debra Seyfried, MBA, CMPE, CPC, Coding and Compliance Strategist for the American Academy of Family Physicians