The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has come out with new information on how to prevent infections in cancer patients. The information is for health care providers, but also can be aimed toward family and caregivers, so your agency might want to look for ideas or new information.
June 13, 2011
Doozie of a coding case
Question: We have a doozie of a patient.
He was discharged from an inpatient stay at the hospital for abscess under the right axilla for which he had an I&D. We are seeing him for wound care following this procedure. The wound is clean now without any infection presently. He also had a pulmonary embolism that was treated in the hospital with lovenox and Coumadin. He is still on Coumadin, of course, and this affects his dressing changes as he bleeds quite a bit during the dressing changes. Plus we will be monitoring his PT/INRs of course. He also has LE DVT.
The primary reason that we are seeing him is the wound care.
He is a type 2 diabetic (fairly recently diagnosed) and just started on Levamir while in the hospital. This may delay wound healing, so I know that it needs to be pretty up in the diagnosis chain.
Past history includes CA of the appendix (which has been removed surgically), but this metastasized to the abdomen (does not give specific organ, but I am assuming colon because he has a colostomy) and the lung. He is independent with his colostomy, so I know not to code “ATTN TO” on this one. He also has hx of prostate CA as well.
His cancer is still active as he is on chemotherapy. It is just on hold related to the fact that he had the abscess.
He is morbidly obese, has HTN (with several meds) and GERD.
I am in desperate need of assistance on this one.
Lisa says: He’s a doozie all right!! I think I would still code the wound as an abscess. Follow with the PE, DVT, diabetes, HTN, secondary site(s) of Ca. Follow with V58.83, V58,61, V44.3 and the rest of the codes. Once you’ve coded the primary, you just have to consider the seriousness of the other conditions and importance to the POC. Push your V codes to the bottom.