Home Health ICD-9/ICD-10 Alert

Reader Questions:

Code Completely For Surgical Wound

Question: We have a diabetic patient and we're providing surgical dressing changes for a surgical wound on her achilles tendon. She's had three incision and drainage procedures on this site, and it's become complicated -- infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus . How should we code for her?

-- Vermont Subscriber

If the focus of the care is the surgical wound, you should code for the infected surgical wound first with 998.59 (Other postoperative infection). Next, code for the organism with 041.11 (Staphylococcus aureus). Follow this with V09.0 (Infection with microorganisms resistant to penicillins) to indicate the resistance. You should also list a code to indicate the diabetes as a comorbidity.

Unless otherwise indicated, reader questions were answered by Lisa Selman-Holman, JD, BSN, RN, HCS-D, COS-C, consultant and principal of Selman-Holman & Associates in Denton, TX.

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