Complication of surgical and medical care, unspecified, initial encounter. T88. 9XXA is a billable/specific ICD-10-CM code that can be used to indicate a diagnosis for reimbursement purposes. The 2022 edition of ICD-10-CM T88.
998.83 - Non-healing surgical wound | ICD-10-CM.
What are postoperative complications? Complication is a term used by health professionals to refer to something which was not intended to happen. Postoperative complications are problems that can happen after you have had surgery but which were not intended.
Z48. 815 - Encounter for surgical aftercare following surgery on the digestive system. ICD-10-CM.
Wound dehiscence is a surgery complication where the incision, a cut made during a surgical procedure, reopens. It is sometimes called wound breakdown, wound disruption, or wound separation. Partial dehiscence means that the edges of an incision have pulled apart in one or more small areas.
A non-healing wound, such as an ulcer, is not coded with an injury code beginning with the letter S. Four common codes are L97-, “non-pressure ulcers”; L89-, “pressure ulcers”; I83-, “varicose veins with ulcers”; and I70.
What are some common postoperative discomforts?Nausea and vomiting from general anesthesia.Sore throat (caused by the tube placed in the windpipe for breathing during surgery)Soreness, pain, and swelling around the incision site.Restlessness and sleeplessness.Thirst.Constipation and gas (flatulence)
Common general postoperative complications include postoperative fever, atelectasis, wound infection, embolism and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The highest incidence of postoperative complications is between one and three days after the operation.
Postoperative morbidity, on the other hand, refers to adverse events and complications following surgery (Khuri et al., 1999).
Use Z codes to code for surgical aftercare. Z47. 89, Encounter for other orthopedic aftercare, and. Z47.
Post-operative visits should be reported with CPT code 99024 when the visit is furnished on the same day as an unrelated E/M service (billed with modifier 24).
ICD-10-CM Code for Encounter for other orthopedic aftercare Z47. 89.
Postoperative pain not associated with a specific postoperative complication is reported with a code from Category G89, Pain not elsewhere classified, in Chapter 6, Diseases of the Nervous System and Sense Organs. There are four codes related to postoperative pain, including:
The key elements to remember when coding complications of care are the following: Code assignment is based on the provider’s documentation of the relationship between the condition and the medical care or procedure.
Determining whether to report postoperative pain as an additional diagnosis is dependent on the documentation, which, again, must indicate that the pain is not normal or routine for the procedure if an additional code is used. If the documentation supports a diagnosis of non-routine, severe or excessive pain following a procedure, it then also must be determined whether the postoperative pain is occurring due to a complication of the procedure – which also must be documented clearly. Only then can the correct codes be assigned.
Postoperative pain typically is considered a normal part of the recovery process following most forms of surgery. Such pain often can be controlled using typical measures such as pre-operative, non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory medications; local anesthetics injected into the operative wound prior to suturing; postoperative analgesics;
Only when postoperative pain is documented to present beyond what is routine and expected for the relevant surgical procedure is it a reportable diagnosis. Postoperative pain that is not considered routine or expected further is classified by whether the pain is associated with a specific, documented postoperative complication.
If the line between acceptable and unacceptable uses of aftercare codes still seems a bit fuzzy, just remember that in most cases, you should only use aftercare codes if there’s no other way for you to express that a patient is on the “after” side of an aforementioned “before-and-after” event.
ICD-10 introduced the seventh character to streamline the way providers denote different encounter types—namely, those in volving active treatment versus those involving subsequent care. However, not all ICD-10 diagnosis codes include the option to add a seventh character. For example, most of the codes contained in chapter 13 of the tabular list (a.k.a. the musculoskeletal chapter) do not allow for seventh characters. And that makes sense considering that most of those codes represent conditions—including bone, joint, or muscle conditions that are recurrent or resulting from a healed injury—for which therapy treatment does progress in the same way it does for acute injuries.
Essentially, you are indicating that the patient is receiving aftercare for the injury. Thus, you should not use aftercare codes in conjunction with injury codes, because doing so would be redundant. 3. You can use Z codes to code for surgical aftercare.
In situations where it’s appropriate to use Z codes, “aftercare codes are generally the first listed diagnosis,” Gray writes. However, that doesn’t mean the Z code should be the only diagnosis code listed for that patient.
In many cases, yes; a patient who undergoes surgery mid-plan of care should receive a re-evaluation. However, per the above-linked article, "some commercial payers may consider the post-op treatment period a new episode of care, in which case you’d need to use an evaluation code.".
Even so, therapists should only use ICD-10 aftercare codes to express patient diagnoses in a very select set of circumstances.