General Surgery Coding Alert

‘Other’ becomes ‘overlapping’.

Although many diagnoses will become far more specific once ICD-10 goes into effect, you won’t have to worry about major changes for reporting malignant neoplasm of small intestine resections that your surgeon performs.

That’s because you’ll find a nearly perfect one-to-one crosswalk from ICD-9 to ICD-10 for this condition. Read on to make sure you’re ready to pick the right ICD-10 code for malignant enterectomy specimens beginning Oct. 1, 2014.

Learn the Codes

Currently, you should report malignant neoplasm of the small intestine using one of the following ICD-9 codes:

• 152.0 — Malignant neoplasm of duodenum
• 152.1 — Malignant neoplasm of jejunum
• 152.2 — Malignant neoplasm of ileum
• 152.3 — Malignant neoplasm of meckel’s diverticulum
• 152.8 — Malignant neoplasm of other specified sites of small intestine
• 152.9 — Malignant neoplasm of small intestine unspecified site.

Once ICD-10 goes into effect, you’ll choose from one of these ICD-10 codes instead:

• C17.0 — Malignant neoplasm of duodenum
• C17.1 — Malignant neoplasm of jejunum
• C17.2 — Malignant neoplasm of ileum
• C17.3 — Meckel’s diverticulum, malignant
• C17.8 — Malignant neoplasm of overlapping sites of small intestine
• C17.9 — Malignant neoplasm of small intestine, unspecified.

Notice: There’s only one significant definition change from ICD-9 to ICD-10: 152.8 is “other specified sites,” while C17.8 is “overlapping sites.”