Recoding CFS in the US under “ill-defined conditions” aka Somatoform Disorders

February 6, 2011 — meagenda:

The clock is ticking for CFS: Partial Code Freeze for ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM/PCS Finalized (US)

Shortlink to Post #59: http://wp.me/pKrrB-Un

The clock is ticking…
The US was authorized by the WHO to develop its own country specific adaptation of the WHO’s now retired ICD-9, called ICD-9-CM, and has been slow to move on to ICD-10.

Rather than skip ICD-10 and move straight onto ICD-11, in 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has been developing a “clinical modification” of ICD-10 called ICD-10-CM. This development process has been in progress for a number of years.

So ICD-10-CM is US specific and it’s scheduled for implementation in October 2013 [1].

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Rather than code CFS in Chapter 6: Diseases of the nervous system, along with ME and PVFS, at G93.3, the US clinical modification is proposing to retain CFS in the R codes and to classify it at R53.82 in Chapter 18:

“Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (R00-R99) This chapter includes symptoms, signs, abnormal results of clinical or other investigative procedures, and ill-defined conditions regarding which no diagnosis classifiable elsewhere is recorded.” [2]

Compulsory reading>>