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Radiology Coding Alert

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Consider Revised 2021 ICD-10-CM Guidelines on Observation Sequencing

Published on Fri Feb 19, 2021

Question: Should we report the observation diagnosis codes (Z03-Z05) as primary diagnoses or secondary? Or does it not matter? Iowa Subscriber Answer: Although in the past you needed to report the observation diagnosis codes as principal diagnoses, that is no longer the case. The ICD-10-CM 2021 Guidelines included information about the following three observation category codes: Z03 (Encounter for medical [...]
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