Lesson 2 Summary
- Several ICD-10-CM codes show the condition’s laterality, and several codes show if the condition is bilateral
- ICD-10-CM includes combination codes for certain conditions and commonly associated symptoms and manifestations
- If a condition can occur in more than 1 trimester, you may report the current trimester of pregnancy in the final character of the ICD-10-CM code based on the provider’s documentation
- ICD-10-CM has 2 kinds of Excludes Notes that are similar because they both show that codes excluded from each other are independent of each other
- ICD-10-CM includes clinical concepts, like underdosing, blood type, and blood alcohol level
- ICD-10-CM uses character x as a placeholder in certain codes to allow for future expansion and fill in other empty characters when a code less than 6 characters in length needs a 7th character
- Voluntarily report external cause codes because they offer valuable data for injury research and evaluation of injury prevention strategies
- If a definitive diagnosis hasn’t been established, report codes for either signs or symptoms, or both, when these codes most accurately describe what’s known about the patient’s condition at the time of that particular encounter
- Report unspecified codes when these codes most accurately describe what’s known about the patient’s condition at the time of that particular encounter