Surgical wound infection codes set to expand dramatically in FY2019

Home health coders could have 435 ICD-10-CM code changes to deal with starting Oct. 1, with 247 new codes, 139 revised codes and 49 codes rendered invalid, according to the proposed hospital inpatient prospective payment system rule (IPPS) rule released April 24.

 

One notable code, T81.4xxA (Infection following a procedure, initial encounter), could become invalid in the new code year.

 

That’s because T81.4xxA, which is the code assigned to capture active treatment provided to a surgical wound infection, is among 49 codes proposed for deletion from the code set, according to the rule.