Hone Your ICD-9 Coding Skills With This Example

You just studied tips for accurate ICD-9 coding in "3 Steps Focus Diagnosis Coding for Your Surgical Claims." Now you can practice those skills with the following example:

Scenario: Your general surgeon excises an external thrombosed hemorrhoid (46320, Excision of thrombosed hemorrhoid, external) in a patient at 28 weeks gestation. What ICD-9 code should you use?

Solution: If you selected 455.4 (External thrombosed hemorrhoids) because you checked only the alphabetic index, you would be wrong. Once you turn to the tabular list, you'll see that category 455 (Hemorrhoids) excludes "that complicating pregnancy, childbirth, or the puerperium (671.8)."

When you look up 671.8 [...]

- Published on 2011-11-17