Heart disease with hypertension

[cwestberry]

Good morning:

I am a physician trying to do better with my diagnosis and documentation. We have a small office and I have to enter diagnosis codes.

I had a new patient with very high blood pressure and LVH on ECG so she had associated heart disease. I coded hypertensive heart disease, do I have to add an additional code for the LVH or cardiomegaly or both?.

 

[mitchellde]

No you do not add heart disease unless there is associated heart failure, the codes tell you to add heart failure if documented. Just be certain the documentation states hypertensive heart disease, or heart disease due to hypertension.

 

[PVAzCPC]

No you do not add heart disease unless there is associated heart failure, the codes tell you to add heart failure if documented. Just be certain the documentation states hypertensive heart disease, or heart disease due to hypertension.

I am having a problem with documentation for Hypertensive heart disease as well. I often have providers state "HHD", but do not specify the heart disease. Coding Guidelines refers to "Heart conditions (425.8, 429.0-429.3, 429.8, 429.9) are assigned to a code from category 402 when a causal relationship is stated....". I am interpreting this to mean that the documentation should specifically state one of the heart conditions reflected by those particularly listed codes found in Coding guidelines. [B
If there is no documented heart condition that meets one of the listed codes, I do not assign HHD.[/B] ]Is this a correct interpretation?