Friday, January 08, 2016

Repeated crushing by alligators and crocodiles: ICD-10 has you covered. Harmed by bad health IT? No codes for that.

Your government at work, spending your tax dollars and making your doctors want to retire early due to increasing bureaucratic busywork. The new ICD-10 coding system they must now use has codes like these, in case you get attacked by a crocodile or alligator.

It even has codes for repeat crushing by the critters...

Notably missing: there are no codes for harms caused by defective, mis-designed or badly implemented electronic medical records/ordering/lab review systems, which are occurring as documented in numerous posts on this blog.  (My mother would comment, but she is deceased from ICD-10 code ...uh, oh wait, no code for that...)

From the CMS ICD-10 search page at https://www.cms.gov/medicare-coverage-database/staticpages/icd-10-code-lookup.aspx:

ICD-10 Code    ICD-10 Code Description
W58.11XA    Bitten by crocodile, initial encounter
W58.11XD    Bitten by crocodile, subsequent encounter
W58.11XS    Bitten by crocodile, sequela
W58.12XA    Struck by crocodile, initial encounter
W58.12XD    Struck by crocodile, subsequent encounter
W58.12XS    Struck by crocodile, sequela
W58.13XA    Crushed by crocodile, initial encounter
W58.13XD    Crushed by crocodile, subsequent encounter
W58.13XS    Crushed by crocodile, sequela
W58.19XA    Other contact with crocodile, initial encounter
W58.19XD    Other contact with crocodile, subsequent encounter
W58.19XS    Other contact with crocodile, sequela

Of course, species of Crocodilia matters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodilia):

W58.01XA    Bitten by alligator, initial encounter
W58.01XD    Bitten by alligator, subsequent encounter
W58.01XS    Bitten by alligator, sequela
W58.02XA    Struck by alligator, initial encounter
W58.02XD    Struck by alligator, subsequent encounter
W58.02XS    Struck by alligator, sequela
W58.03XA    Crushed by alligator, initial encounter
W58.03XD    Crushed by alligator, subsequent encounter
W58.03XS    Crushed by alligator, sequela
W58.09XA    Other contact with alligator, initial encounter
W58.09XD    Other contact with alligator, subsequent encounter
W58.09XS    Other contact with alligator, sequela

Haven't searched ICD-10 for "abduction and experimentation by Roswell Greys" yet.


What's the ICD-10 code for this?

-- SS

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What is the difference between an alligator and a crocodile, exactly?

Are their bites different?