Unspecified osteoarthritis

[solocoder]

Since there is no ICD 10 code for unspecified osteoarthritis of foot (or toe), does that mean my only choice is M19.90 unspecified osteoarthritis, unspecified site?
Yikes.

 

[erjones147]

IMO, since there is no indication that the arthritis is caused by another disease process, I would code M19.079 (assuming unknown laterality)

 

[tristate]

M19.90 is what we use for osteoarthritis of the foot, toes, ankle, elbow, hand, shoulder,wrist if there is no documentation of primary, secondary or post-traumatic.

 

[amymeyers01]

Unspecified OA

This section has caused problems for me too! In radiology, you will rarely, if ever, see diagnosis listed as primary OA. However, the CSI job aid for radiology lists the primary code for everything except the knees. I thought this was odd, so I did a little research on this. If you look up osteoarthritis in the index,you find sub entries for most (or all) joints which lead you to the code for primary OA of that joint - except for knees. The entry for knees takes you to unspecified OA. I haven't found any explanation for this, and I am not very comfortable with using primary when the report doesn't document primary. If anyone knows why they are indexed this way, I would love to know if that truly is the way we are supposed to code them.

Thanks!
Amy Meyers, CPC, ICD-10 certified