I have to admit, I was a little disturbed this week after reading through comments on a Facebook post. The post was about the different 7th characters and what they mean and when to add them. This is something that can be confusing for sure. The question was fine–it was the answers that scared me a little. I realized after reading that post, that many coders (not even new coders–I’m talking about experienced coders–do not understand seventh character A.
If you have your ICD-10-CM book around, please look in the beginning section of Chapter 19. Or just to make it easier–here is a pic from my book:
Please see what I’ve underlined above. “The 7th character is based on whether the patient is undergoing active treatment and not whether the provider is seeing the patient for the first time.” The key is active treatment. That is what the A means. It has nothing to do with the provider seeing the patient. For example, if someone goes to the ER and it turns out he/she has a broken wrist–that encounter will be coded with 7th character A. Say this same person now follows up with their regular doctor the following day–the fracture is still coded with an A. It doesn’t change based on the provider or anything like that. It has to do with whether or not the patient is receiving active treatment. This patient is still receiving active treatment, so it’s still coded with seventh character A.
I can write many more posts about fracture coding (and I will if that’s something you guys are interested in) but I felt like I had to post about this. It is all here in the guidelines.
Are any of you looking for practice reports to code? There are some available. There are 15 x-ray reports and for each one you code the ICD-10-CM and CPT. Rationales are included at the end. Click the button below for more info.
Questions? Please feel free to comment below or email me at midnightmedicalcoding@gmail.com.
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