Orthopedic Coding Alert

ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes share a common descriptor.

Chronic pain the neck is a common diagnosis you may be reporting. The good news is that ICD-10 transition will offer no additional challenges for reporting neck pain. You’ll have a simple one-to-one match in ICD-10.

When your surgeon makes a diagnosis of chronic neck pain, you report 723.1 (Cervicalgia) in ICD-10. Your choice will remain simple in ICD-10, when you’ll make an easy switch to M54.2 (Cervicalgia). Diagnosis M54.2 falls under the category “Other Dorsopathies; Dorsalgia.” Note that M54.2 does not apply to cervicalgia due to intervertebral cervical disc disorder. For those situations, ICD-10 directs you to the M50 (Cervical disc disorders) code family.

Coding tip: Don’t fall into the trap of reporting neck pain (or pain in any of the spinal regions) with one of the joint pain codes from ICD-9.  Coding options in that group pinpoint joint pain in the shoulder region (719.41), upper arm (719.42), pelvic region and thigh (719.45), and other anatomic regions. A “pain in joint” choice, however, isn’t as accurate for neck pain as 723.1.

Document it: The biggest factor in correctly coding neck pain is knowing the anatomic site. Ensure that your providers always specify the site, so you can report a detailed code whenever possible.