Can Form 2220 Diagnostics 2023-2024

One of the questions that we get from new students is knowing when you can and cannot code a diagnosis. I think a lot of students, as soon as they learn how to look up codes, they are ready to code everything that they see. Every new student does it. I remember I did it. I was wanting to call myself a super coder because I wanted to code everything. It's fun to code, but you can't do that. You need to code only definitive diagnosis, and they can be hard to identify. One of the things that you have to stay away from is equivocal language. When we say equivocal language, that means it's kind of on the fence. It's not definite. It could go one way or the other. You have to stay away from that type of verbiage. Impending or threatened conditions, you'll see that, but that can be tricky. You cannot code something if it has not happened yet in most cases. Now I know that sounds again a little ambiguous, but if your physician documents, for example, "impending rupture of spleen due to enlarged spleen," okay, impending tells you it's gonna happen. They're pretty sure it's going to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. So you cannot code a ruptured spleen. You can only code the splenomegaly, which is an enlarged spleen (7-8-9.2). That's the proper code to use. Now, I've got some more examples for you, so we'll scroll down and look at some of these others. Okay, if your physician documents something like this: "Mrs. Jones is seen today with lower abdominal pain and spotting. I will admit her for threatening a threatens miscarriage." Okay, so you're now saying to yourself, "Well, she hasn't had a miscarriage. It hasn't happened yet." But in...