Hurt at the opera: Y92253
Stabbed while crocheting: Y93D1
Walked into a lamppost: W2202XA
Walked into a lamppost, subsequent encounter: W2202XD
Submersion due to falling or jumping from crushed water skis: V9037XA
And subcodes for each
W56Contact with nonvenomous marine animal
W56.0Contact with dolphin
W56.01Bitten by dolphin
W56.01XA…… initial encounter
W56.01XD…… subsequent encounter
W56.01XS…… sequela
W56.02Struck by dolphin
W56.09Other contact with dolphin
Then it's on to sharks and orcas
Wait a sec, there, Greenfield! You ask what’s the medical code for “Being Struck by a Turtle at the Opera”?
Then you talk about separate codes for being struck by a turtle OR getting hurt at the opera.
But what happens if a flying turtle lands on me while I’m at the opera? We mustn’t ignore or make light of these potentially tragic events that could affect many families with Post Turtle Strike At Opera Syndrome.
I thought ICD-9 was bad! I had a girlfriend many years ago who did medical coding from home and made a pretty decent wage doing so. She’d receive about 10 hours of dictated orders through a secure site, login to the consulting firm VPN, put on her headphones, and get to work.
She showed me the reference book and websites she used. They were pretty intense. I’d ask for her thoughts on the whole process and her reply was, “Well, it keeps me employed.”
This is Obama’s plan: employ the unemployable. Learn some codes, push some buttons, listen to personal information on patients, even though they’re coded (or at least they used to be).
Yep, I was a ICD.9 coder and one of my favorites was “pecked by birds”. I could code anything put in front of me.
Thank you for sharing the ridiculous side of Diagnosis codes.
On a more practical side, the insurance companies are pushing hard to “inform” their customers of the new “benefits” of ObamaCare, one of which is “preventive care”.
From Blue Cross: “Preventive Care Benefits: The law prohibits cost-sharing for preventive services, including immunizations, breast cancer screening and other recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and other agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control, for plan years beginning on or after Sept. 23, 2010.”
What this means is any ObamaCare qualified plan, MUST include preventive care as part of the premium paid, and you cannot be charge for it as an additional expense. (hence why the premiums are skyrocketing).
Unfortunately, A LOT of doctors don’t know how to bill “preventive care” even when a person asks for it. Then the person gets stuck with medical bills on top of the sky-high premiums already paid. All because the doctor “decides” it is not “preventive”.
Blue Cross touts “preventive care” as a “cost-cutting approach to health care”. Yes, indeed. but for whom?
Cost shifting.
The genesis of all this was Medicare fraud. Unscrupulous providers ripping off the system by upcharging for procedures that were not exactly in line with the truth.
The bureaucratic response of course was to fine-tune the coding system down to specific codes for even the silliest or most remote possibilities.
So the cause of this is Government, all the way round.
struck by a turtle, but your too late
you give er, somehting, a bad name!
Cut finger.
Slicing bagel.
Plain.
Sesame.
Poppy.
etc.
Awww. I was hoping that W56.03-W56.08 existed. Those could have been interesting because dolphins are pervs.
Well, maybe ICD-11 will fulfill my prurient interests.
This subject is about as funny as cancer to most physicians. The task of converting to ICD10 codes is so complex and so fraught with chaos that CMS RECOMENDS ALL HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONERS HAVE AT LEAST 6 MONTHS OF CAPITAL RESERVES to get through the transition. One of the very senior officials at CMS has admitted that there would be very little if any monies received by docs during this 6 month transition.