News: IPPS Final Rule includes some CDI related code changes
August 16, 2012
CDI Strategies - Volume 6, Issue 17
CMS chose not to include code 428.0 (congestive heart failure, unspecified) as a CC in the IPPS Final Rule released August 1. That disappoints ACDIS Advisory Board member James S. Kennedy, MD, CCS, CDIP, managing director at FTI Consulting in Atlanta, because in some instances of acute heart failure, no systolic or diastolic heart muscle disease is present, such as in acute aortic or mitral insufficiency.
In other cases the treating physician or surgeon simply did not want to incur unnecessary healthcare spending to get an echocardiogram needed to determine whether the heart failure is currently systolic or diastolic.
“I estimate that 20% of concurrent CDI work is to clarify this very issue which, if classifying 428.0 as a CC was approved as requested, would have reduced the work and hassle involved in clarifying systolic or diastolic heart failure and improve hospital efficiency and cost which, in turn, could be passed along to the government,” Kennedy says.
CMS also finalized the move of code 584.8 (acute renal failure with a specified pathological lesion) from an MCC to a CC based on their analysis of MedPAR data. Although this move is a disappointment, it may result in official follow-up on the advice provided in the AHA’s Coding Clinic for ICD-9-CM, 3rd Quarter, 2011, in which coders were instructed to report acute renal failure due to specified pathological lesions, such as lupus nephritis, to code 584.9 (acute renal failure, unspecified), instead of code 584.8, Kennedy says.
“Perhaps the Cooperating Parties will now revisit this advice and provide official follow-up that allows coders to use 584.8 when a physician links acute renal failure to a specified pathological lesion, such as lupus nephritis, acute glomerulonephritis, interstitial nephritis, or another renal pathology not covered in [codes] 584.5, 584.6, or 584.7, since 584.8 is no longer a MCC,” Kennedy says.
Kennedy is pleased that CMS included mild and moderate malnutrition as CCs. He would like to see ICD-10 embrace the recently published American Dietetic Association / American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition consensus statement on malnutrition that classifies this entity as “non-severe” and “severe” instead of “mild,” “moderate,” and “severe.”
CMS did not add any MCCs or delete any CCs.
CMS finalized a proposal to reassign cases with a principal diagnosis code 487.0 (influenza with pneumonia) and an additional secondary diagnosis code of certain pneumonia codes listed as a secondary diagnosis codes from MS-DRGs 193, 194, and 195 to MS-DRGs 177, 178, and 179.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Michelle A. Leppert, CPC, for HCPro Inc. Breaking News.
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