Wiki Psychiatric diagnosis primary??

[sunitabacchus]

We are an Internal Medicine office, but we have physicians who go to assisted living facilities as well.

If one of our physicians is going to an ALF to see a patient for behavioral medication management, can we use a psychiatric dx as the primary dx??

Thank you.

 

[rhondatalley]

A psychiatric diagnosis can be the principal diagnosis but make sure that your physician documents all of the related conditions as well. In the ALF setting, there are other scenarios that might come into play such as dementia with a behavioral disturbance in which case the dementia code would be sequenced first.