Home Health ICD-9/ICD-10 Alert

Coding Tools:

Coding Time-Savers You Can Put in Place Today

Use this checklist to cut in half the time you spend thumbing through your ICD-9 manual

Tired of thumbing through countless pages just to find the V-code section of your ICD-9 book? Stick a tab on each of the bolded sections below to help find these oft-referenced sections in record time.

Index of Diseases (Volume 2) -- For easy reference, tab these popular home-health categories and conditions in the index*:

Accident, cerebrovascular (p. 9)
Aftercare (p. 17)
Diabetes (p. 96)
Fracture (p. 145)
Hypertension table (p. 176)
Injury (p. 194)
Neoplasm table (p. 233)
Pneumonia (p. 286)
Ulcer, Decubitus (p. 354)
Wound (p. 363)

Tabular List (Volume 1) -- Note the color-coded tabs for various systems and the code ranges (from three to five digits). The diseases/conditions are arranged under a general category and are indented as they become increasingly specific. For example, turn to the first page of the Tabular List. You'll see this progression:

Infections and Parasitic Diseases
Intestinal Infectious Diseases
001 Cholera
001.9 Cholera, unspecified

Place a tab at the beginning of the V-codes section because these are the codes in home health that coders are most likely to use. Also place a tab at the beginning of the E-codes section. E codes describe the cause, intent or place of an injury or a poisoning.

Quick tip: Don't rush past the ICD-9-CM Official Conventions and the Coding Guidelines at the beginning of the manual. Scan this information and highlight anything you may need to reference.

*Note: The page numbers listed correspond to ICD-9-CM Expert for Physicians -- Volumes 1 & 2, 2004, 6th Edition published by Ingenix.

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