Q: When do you code hypertension, hypertensive urgency, HTN emergency or HTN crisis by the documentation? Like what blood pressure readings constitute the different terms or other signs and symptoms that would accompany these types of hypertension?
A: First of all, you cannot code off of blood pressure readings or the signs and symptoms and call it that. It has to be stated. Hypertensive urgency. Hypertensive crisis. Those are keywords. If they’re not documented, you can’t pull those codes. Simple as that.
Coach Jennifer: So you code them because the provider said the patient was in hypertensive crisis and that’s what he’s saying in his medical record, so then you can code hypertension crisis, which is I60… I just taught my class this last night. Let’s see. A couple off the top of my head but I can’t remember.
Coach Alicia: And the other thing is these are not going to happen in the doctor’s office. And if they are, you’re on your to the ER. So they should not be just thrown around as codes that you normally code. These are emergencies.
Coach Jennifer: I don’t have my ICD-10 in front of me. I believe this have coding guidelines.
Coach Alicia: Oh, yeah, they do.
Coach Jennifer: There are coding guidelines for these hypertensive, so you have to go exactly what those coding guidelines say in order to provide.
Coach Alicia: It reminds of the cancer codes. The other day there was a provider that had coded that they were… it was an ENT and he was going to take something off of the mouth and it was a myelocele he said but he coded it as a neoplasm of uncertain behavior. It’s not that. But he didn’t know that because myelocele actually has a code and it’s a cyst type of thing. Again, because those cancer codes have specific guidelines to be able to use them. It’s the same thing here. You gotta have that document, that verbiage or you can’t pull those codes. And we can’t pick them even we knew what a blood pressure was for one of those and the signs and symptoms associated to it. You can’t do it. That you can’t even query about it. That would be…
Coach Jennifer: Leading…
Coach Alicia: Yeah. Doctor… Yeah. You may know. And then what’s really interesting is when you start learning disease process. And it’s good that you do know. Don’t think that you don’t, it’s not of your business, because you want to know. You want to say, “Oh, this is what I’m going to expect to see.” “These are what medicines he’s going to take and now I can look to see if he’s going to be on anticoagulants” or blah blah blah.
Handouts, transcripts, enhanced video replay and instructor access are available to CCO Club members. If you are interested in membership visit http://cco.us/club.
http://medicalbillingcodingonline.org/medical-coding-for-hypertension/
Comments
Post a Comment