ICD9CM Billing, A Better Understanding

By John Miller


In the world of medicine you have to follow a certain rules in order to come up with anything, you cannot simply do it via guessing. ICD9CM billing is a coding system that hold codes that are going to be sued in describing diagnosis in patients. Like what were the symptoms present and what was the reason for it, was it a disease or perhaps a disorder.

Accuracy is very important so that the quality of the patient care is meet, in order to prevent medical malpractice, and so that the insurance reimbursement receive by the medical office is correct. In order for a person to be able to perform proper ICD9 coding, he or she needs to understand how are they being used and how to use it manually including its importance.

Now, in order for you to perform ICD9 coding properly, you need to understand it first such as how and why are they used, how important they are, and so you may do it manually in the long run. The 9 on it means ninth division. ICD on the other hand means international classification of disease. Its purpose is so you could identify what kind of disease are you dealing with.

It describes why the patient is visiting, what was the finding of the illness or perhaps an injury, and the information about the supplement given if there were any. It can be both numeric and alphanumeric. When coded, it needs to reach the highest level of specification and must be listed on the billing claim forms.

It is given that you will be confused when you study about this. However, when you do not have a full understanding on how to you it you will be more frustrated. This already have three volumes, the first 2 contains information about the diagnostic that are used by the physicians and the hospital billing.

The volume 3 on the other hand which was just released not long ago contains all the procedural information for the process of hospital billing, which can be seen in a separate manual. You cannot understand all this if you will not read the first two volumes first. So, start there before proceeding to this part.

Keep in mind that volume 1 must be in a numerical form, 2 is in alphabetical, while 3 needs to be both, alphabetical and numeric. Formatting needs to be done manually with the use of a special formatting. When you use that, identifying the right codes becomes easy. That format is called conventions.

Now there are abbreviations that you will be encountering all the time, NEC and NOS. NEC means not elsewhere classifiable. NOS means not otherwise specified. For color codes, blue means you cannot use it as a primary diagnosis, best describe as a condition which is caused by another condition. Yellow for not enough information and gray for other codes.

Lets proceed to formatting. Main terms must be written in bold letters. If there are any alternative words or synonym present, you need to put a bracket. Sub terms must be indented so you may easily identify it. For supplemental it has to be italic. Add a bullet when a new code is added.




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