Wiki ICD-10 Obesity with Well Visit

[ngp@healthtecsolutions.com]

If a patient is seen for an annual well visit with an additional diagnosis of obesity or overweight with a high BMI would the Z00 code be submitted as with or without abnormal findings?

Thanks,
Nancy

 

[mitchellde]

The obesity would not be an abnormal finding. The patient would obviously know they were obese and it would not be something "discovered" by the provider at this encounter.

 

[cornelds]

If a patient is seen for an annual well visit with an additional diagnosis of obesity or overweight with a high BMI would the Z00 code be submitted as with or without abnormal findings?

Thanks,
Nancy

If a patient has a diagnosis of Obesity due to excess calories (E66.01), are we required to report the BMI ? In another scenerio, if the biller is simply given a superbill and the physician indicates "Obesity" as a diagnosis and the medical record doesn't specify the BMI, would it be acceptable to report E66.9?

 

[mitchellde]

The use additional code states to add the code for the BMI if known. A diagnosis of just obesity would be the E66.9.

 

[Donna Jean]

CMS states the provider MUST be the one to document in the note the BMI when coding obesity and morbid obesity.

 

[BOGAPLLC]

The obesity would not be an abnormal finding. The patient would obviously know they were obese and it would not be something "discovered" by the provider at this encounter.

Debra, I don't understand why you would say "the patient would obviously know they were obese and it would not be something "discovered" by the provider at this encounter"... That doesn't make sense to me, since many people that are obese don't know it. After all, obesity can be just a pound or more over the BMI guidelines. Most patients are not familiar with the BMI guidelines, so one might not know.

So getting back to the original question... lets assume the patient doesn't have a clue, would the code mentioned be an "abnormal finding"?

 

[mitchellde]

If you can write a rationale to make fly the. I guess. But I would not recommend it. Honestly a patient knows when they are not in optimal weight height parameters, being overweight comes in different degrees of severity sure but I don't feel that the provider making a distinction between overweight an obese constitutes an abnormal finding.