2020 ICD-10 Changes Are Coming

Happy ICD-10 Day! OK…that’s not an official holiday. But it’s important to remember that the ICD-10 code set is updated each year and with those updates come changes that eye care providers and their teams need to know about. Thus, we’re happy to declare today our own ICD-10 Day in the interest of bringing those changes to you far in advance of their implementation this fall.

First, remember that ICD-10 offers us greater specificity than ICD-9 did and, in turn, allows health care systems to better track what conditions are being managed, how diseases interrelate, etc. With that specificity comes many more available codes. There were around 13,000 ICD-9 codes in 2015 and, at the time of ICD-10 implementation, there were around 68,000 codes in that set. That number has since grown to slightly over 72,000.

Each year a review panel meets multiple times to review stakeholder feedback about codes that should be added, removed, or edited and ultimately decides on the changes to be implemented on October 1 of that year. You’ll remember recent history:

The changes to take effect on October 1, 2020 have officially been released and the primary impact to eye care providers surrounds corneal conditions:

• New codes to represent laterality for corneal dystrophies (endothelial, epithelial, granular, lattice, macular, “other”, and “unspecified”)
• New codes to represent laterality for challenges involving corneal transplant (i.e. rejection, failure, infection, and “other” or “unspecified” complications)

A few other edits of interest include:

• Breaking the singular code for saccadic issues into two options: “deficient saccadic eye movements” and “deficient smooth pursuit eye movements”
• Deletion of the singular headache code in favor of two more detailed options: “headache with orthostatic component” and “headache, unspecified”
• Two new external cause codes related to ophthalmic devices

RevolutionEHR will be updated with the new eye-related codes on October 1st, 2020 to provide a seamless transition for our customers.

We’ve also compiled a list of the eye-specific changes taking effect this year to give you a quick resource to reference in your preparation. Note that the guide contains three columns: Action, Code, and Description. The “Action” column describes what is happening to the code to the right of it and will contain “Delete” or “Add”. Each area of change is also grouped together to allow easier visualization. We hope you find this preview helpful as you prepare for the changes coming this fall.

Download the guide containing a list of eye-specific changes here.

RevolutionEHR is committed to staying on top of eye care industry updates on behalf of our customers. If you’re interested in partnering with us for EHR software and practice solutions, contact us at sales@revolutionehr.com or 877-738-3471 x1 or explore our solutions on our website.