Question: One of our COPD patients presented with bronchitis. Our pulmonologist wants to only report J44.0 (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute lower respiratory infection) but the coder wants to report additional codes. Who is correct? Codify Subscriber Answer: The coder is correct in this case. When your physician documents both chronic obstructive bronchitis and an episode of acute bronchitis, you should sequence J44.0 first, but you’ll need to add an additional code to identify the infection, if known. This is due to the instruction for J44.0 to “Use additional code to identify the infection.” In this case, that code comes from the J20.- (Acute bronchitis) category, and if the type of acute bronchitis is not further specified, the code is J20.9 (Acute bronchitis, unspecified).