tci General Surgery Coding Alert - 2004 Issue 9

Prepare Now for a New Diagnosis for Stroke and CVA

Payers are already gearing up to require 434.91 Come Oct. 1, you're going to have to apply a different diagnosis code for stroke patients. Now you report stroke or cerebrovascular accident (CVA) using ICD-9 code 436 (Acute, but ill defined, cerebrovascular disease), but for the coming year (beginning in October) you should instead choose existing code 434.91 (Cerebral artery occlusion, unspecified, with cerebral infarction) to describe this condition. "Code 436 is somewhat vague and is not always included on Medicare coverage policies," says Jackie Miller, MA, CPC, senior consultant at Coding Strategies Inc., a healthcare reimbursement...

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