Wiki Diagnosis Coding help

Hi, about a year late...:) M46 is a category for "Other Inflammatory Spondylopathies", and it looks like that is what one is supposed to select when following the ICD-10 index path. However, we wouldn't select a code from M46 unless we had the verbiage of 'inflammatory'. Since it appears you have the term arthropathy, I'd follow this path in ICD-10: Arthropathy...and since you have "facet"...I'd pick 'Specified Form'...then 'Vertebrae' = M12.88
Arthropathy
Specified form
Vertebrae
If you only had the term/verbiage of Arthritis of the spine, again, it looks as if ICD-10 would lead you to the M46 category. But again, you cannot select that in the absence of the condition being further specified in the documentation as inflammatory. Coding Clinic 2016, 4th quarter instructs us to assume 'Osteoarthritis' when the arthritis type is not mentioned. So if the arthritis is not specified as inflammatory...we would code M19.--.

Clear as mud? :)

4088

Rhonda Winder, CPC, CPMA, CRC
 
Hi, about a year late...:) M46 is a category for "Other Inflammatory Spondylopathies", and it looks like that is what one is supposed to select when following the ICD-10 index path. However, we wouldn't select a code from M46 unless we had the verbiage of 'inflammatory'. Since it appears you have the term arthropathy, I'd follow this path in ICD-10: Arthropathy...and since you have "facet"...I'd pick 'Specified Form'...then 'Vertebrae' = M12.88
Arthropathy
Specified form
Vertebrae
If you only had the term/verbiage of Arthritis of the spine, again, it looks as if ICD-10 would lead you to the M46 category. But again, you cannot select that in the absence of the condition being further specified in the documentation as inflammatory. Coding Clinic 2016, 4th quarter instructs us to assume 'Osteoarthritis' when the arthritis type is not mentioned. So if the arthritis is not specified as inflammatory...we would code M19.--.

Clear as mud? :)

View attachment 4088

Rhonda Winder, CPC, CPMA, CRC
Thank you
 
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