ICD-10-CM Guidelines for 2019 are Here – These are the Changes

CMS and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics released changes to the ICD-10-CM guidelines for fiscal year 2019.

Here’s what you should know:

1. The new guidelines apply to all hospital inpatient and outpatient coding from Oct. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30, 2019.

2. The guidelines are organized into four sections:

Section I: Conventions, general guidelines and chapter-specific guidelines
Section II: Guidelines for selection of principal diagnosis for non-outpatient settings
Section III: Guidelines for reporting additional diagnoses in non-outpatient settings
Section IV: Outpatient coding and reporting

3. Several changes were made in Section I. General Guideline No. 14 was revised to include new directions related to social determinants and new directions on documentation by clinicians other than the patient’s provider.

4. The following chapters also contain revisions:

Chapter 1: Certain infectious and parasitic diseases
Chapter 2: Neoplasms
Chapter 9: Diseases of the circulatory system
Chapter 15: Pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium
Chapter 18: Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified
Chapter 19: Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes
Chapter 21: Factors influencing health status and contact with health service

5. The full Official Guidelines for Coding and Reporting can be found here.