There is a significant change to the guidelines in chapter 9: Diseases of the Circulatory System. As you may recall in order to code the diagnosis of Hypertensive Heart and/or Kidney Disease the documentation had to be supported with language linking the conditions. This has changed. There is a presumed causal relationship between hypertension and heart involvement (I50.- or I51.4 – I51.9) and between hypertension and kidney involvement, as the two conditions are linked by the term “with” in the Alphabetic Index of the ICD-10 CM book. These conditions should be coded as related even in the absence of provider documentation explicitly linking them, unless the documentation clearly states the conditions are unrelated.

I am posting this as the changes did not make it to print.

Here is a link to a great article giving an overview of the changes. http://www.icd10monitor.com/enews/it…sions-for-2017

Steph