There is a family of ICD10 codes for pedestrians being injured by cars. V03: “Pedestrian injured in collision w car, pick-up truck or van.”
Your patient wasn’t injured, so it’s a fair complaint to say that there should be a “struck” version in addition to an “injured” version. But otherwise, this situation seems covered by the codebook?
Though I do agree that requiring doctors to become coders is a mistake
I understand that, given a simple _textbox_, some (or many or maybe most or even almost all) doctors might decline to write a particularly cogent and precise essay on the 'facts' leading to some kind of Official Medical Intervention. And I do appreciate the difficulty of 'coding' any kind of simple set of categories based on freeform text (or the lack thereof), but it's hard not to think that purpose of the ICD codes is to sabotage anyone ever learning anything from these records!
I am a little miffed that you didn't actually end the post with whatever the 'correct' code is! Or is it simply that, in fact, people cannot officially be struck by cars?
The doctor doesn't know *what* the patient was struck by (unless it's somehow still attached, or maybe if it happened right there in the hospital in plain view). Anything more specific than "object" is guesswork, and even that makes some assumptions.
Given that all such reports are made in the shadow of litigation, you'd think the system would be careful with language.
Very funny! "Struck by duck, subsequent encounter" is my favorite.
There is a family of ICD10 codes for pedestrians being injured by cars. V03: “Pedestrian injured in collision w car, pick-up truck or van.”
Your patient wasn’t injured, so it’s a fair complaint to say that there should be a “struck” version in addition to an “injured” version. But otherwise, this situation seems covered by the codebook?
Though I do agree that requiring doctors to become coders is a mistake
This is both very funny and very NOT funny!
I understand that, given a simple _textbox_, some (or many or maybe most or even almost all) doctors might decline to write a particularly cogent and precise essay on the 'facts' leading to some kind of Official Medical Intervention. And I do appreciate the difficulty of 'coding' any kind of simple set of categories based on freeform text (or the lack thereof), but it's hard not to think that purpose of the ICD codes is to sabotage anyone ever learning anything from these records!
I am a little miffed that you didn't actually end the post with whatever the 'correct' code is! Or is it simply that, in fact, people cannot officially be struck by cars?
The doctor doesn't know *what* the patient was struck by (unless it's somehow still attached, or maybe if it happened right there in the hospital in plain view). Anything more specific than "object" is guesswork, and even that makes some assumptions.
Given that all such reports are made in the shadow of litigation, you'd think the system would be careful with language.
Very funny write-up though.