ICD-10: Narrow Choice for Essential Hypertension to I10

ICD-10 streamlines to single diagnosis.

Many diagnoses will expand to multiple options with ICD-10 in October 2013, but that's not always the case. Essential hypertension is one diagnosis your internist might report that will actually have fewer choices with ICD-10.

Currently: ICD-9 2011 includes three diagnosis options for essential hypertension:

• 401.0 -- Essential hypertension; malignant
• 401.1 -- ... benign
• 401.9 -- ... unspecified.

ICD-10, however, includes only a single code for essential hypertension: I10 (Essential [primary] hypertension).

Bonus: Eliminating multiple diagnoses eliminates the problem of being forced to choose the "unspecified" code when documentation fails to indicate "benign" or "malignant."

Additional: When ICD-10 goes into effect, you'll need to keep [...]

- Published on 2011-10-17