Otolaryngology Coding Alert

This anatomy crosswalk makes breaking out dysphonia and hyper/hyponasality a breeze. Get ready to rely more on specific voice and speech disturbance codes and less on catch-all codes. Thanks to ICD-9 2010 creations, you can specify several symptoms involving the head and neck in the 784.4 and 784.5 subcategories. Otolaryngologists and speech-language pathologists use different methods to evaluate and treat dysphonia and hyper/hyponasality. "Now they have new codes to use when they do that," says Nancy Swigert, MA, CCC-SLP, BRS-S, with ENT Associates in Clearwater, Fla. Take these steps to make sure your superbill's throat codes won't leave you choking on rejections come this fall and winter (Some insurers may not require the new codes on their ICD-9 2010 HIPAA-compliant date of Oct. 1). Step 1: Update 784.40 Entry to Include Unspecified Resonance Once insurers start to accept ICD-9 2010 diagnoses, pause before you automatically use 784.40. Your 2009 superbill [...]