Consider Injury Type When Choosing These 2nd Characters
Question: When reporting a code from Chapter 19 of ICD-10-CM code book: Injury, Poisoning, and Certain Other Consequences of External Causes (S00-T88), what do the 3rd characters represent? Louisiana Subscriber Answer: We mentioned 3rd characters briefly last month in the article “Take Traumatic Fracture Diagnoses to the 7th Character.” Since we were only dealing with fractures, we didn’t delve into the specifics of 3rd-character coding for Chapter 19 codes when the injury isn’t a fracture; however, the 3rd character of a Chapter 19 code can indicate other types of injuries as well. There is a taxonomy for the 3rd characters in a Chapter 19 code. That’s according to Leigh Poland, RHIA, CCS, CDIP, CIC, AHIMA Approved ICD-10-CM/PCS Trainer, who explained the classification system during her HEALTHCON 2026 presentation “Trauma Coding Mastery: Navigating ICD-10-CM/PCS for Complex Injury Encounters.” As we discussed last month, the 2nd character of a Chapter 19 diagnosis identifies the body part injured. For example, code injuries to the abdomen, lower back, lumbar spine, pelvis, or genitalia with 2nd character “3.” The 3rd character of a fracture diagnosis offers details on the injury type. According to Poland, these are the 3rd-character options for Chapter 19 codes: Chris Boucher, MS, CPC, Senior Development Editor, AAPC
