How to master the ICD-10-CM 7th Character?

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• How to master the ICD-10-CM 7th Character?

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How to master the ICD-10-CM 7th Character?
With the advancements in medical professions and
medical emergency throughout the world with
COVID19 infections, a lot of researches have come
to light. Let us understand the diagnosis coding
for ICD-10-CM. International Classification of
Disease ICD stands for International
Classification of Disease, a technological
innovation that helps to spot health trends,
statistics and new diseases globally. A lot of
diseases and symptoms classification has been
done by ICD. It has been in operation since May
1990. A parallel sharing and storage of health
information have been in operation with its use
since then. The more the characters in ICD,
better the identification of a phenomenon. The
ICD monitors existence of a disease and the
number of deaths due to it. Though the health
information sharing has a lot of regulatory
restrictions in the USA from acts like
HIPPA(Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act), ICD is in accordance with
the act. It also helps resolve disputes related
to claim settlements by identifying the root
cause if death. Get Familiar with Likely
Options Many categories that require a 7th
character have these three options
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How to master the ICD-10-CM 7th Character?

• A, initial encounter
• D, subsequent encounter
• S, sequela
• In the previous versions of ICD-9 the maximum
  character space allowed used to be 3 -4
  characters. It works upon the ADS principle of
  encounters, where A being the initial encounter
  phase where the patient is undergoing an active
  treatment. It does not mean that the patient has
  been encountered for the first time. D means
  subsequent encounter, here subsequent point
  towards recovery, the patient is almost is in the
  stage of recovery or to be cured of the
  identified disease. S represents a Sequela, this
  is the condition where the patient has developed
  some complications because of the injury or
  disease.
• Many a times an injury does not point towards any
  further damage to the cells or blood flow but, in
  the later stages it may develop haemorrhage or
  something similar to that. This condition or
  stage of encounter is called sequel.
• We will talk about the initial and subsequent
  encounters captured in the diagnosis code. Lets
  consider an example with the code S52.501_ where
  the 7th character is missing, with the initial
  encounter of any kind like fracture where the
  patient has come for the first time one will have
  to put the 7th character of the encounter as an
  A and the diagnosis code is going to end as an
  A with the code being S52.521A.

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How to master the ICD-10-CM 7th Character?
Example Consider the case where the patient is
arriving for a follow up appointment with the
doctor. Here the diagnosis code will end with a
D, the resulting code will be altered and the
character A will be replaced by character D.
The point to be noted is that the initial and
subsequent encounters are talking about the
diagnosis of same person which can save up his
medical history and records. Sequel encounter
indicated by the character S The last category
is the sequel encounter which would be indicated
by the character S. This is a condition where
the patient has had complications and is on a
follow-up appointment for that. Here the code
which was being used as S52.501 will be modified
by the hospital with the character S in the
end. So the code will be S52.501S.
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