General Surgery Coding Conferences: Make 948 Your Burn Coding Constant

By Author: Julia Rose
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General surgery coding conferences: Make 948 your burn coding constant General surgery coding conferences Question: The general surgeon treats burn victims, and I am wondering about diagnosis coding in these cases. Do I need to include a code from category 948 on every claim?

The answer is yes. Once you place the codes to represent the patient's burns, discover the right code from category 948 as a secondary diagnosis. According to ICD-9 Codes 2010, the 948.xx codes can also serve up as primary diagnoses when the documentation does not specify the burn site.

Here's why: Code 948 helps paint a better picture of the patient's injuries: The fourth digit in the 948.xx code represents the total body surface area (TBSA) burned, and the final digit indicates how much of the TBSA suffered third-degree burns.

You will employ the ‘Rules of Nines' to choose the 4th and 5th digits. The rule matches percentage and body areas as follows:


Head and neck, the right arm, and the left arm each come to 9 percent.
...
... The back trunk, front trunk, left leg, and right leg each is equivalent to 18 percent (the front and back trunk are divided into upper and lower segments, and each leg is divided into back and front segments, each equaling 9 percent)
Genitalia equal 1 percent. For instance: Let us say a patient has a badly burned right leg. The patient has various second-degree burns on the front of his right leg and more third-degree burns to the back of his right leg, however no loss of body part. In this example, you'd list the following diagnosis codes in this order:


945.39
945.29

For more answers to questions such as this, sign up for general surgery coding conferences. One such conference is taking place in Orlando, FL; so go sign up for it today!