It’s through the skin (these are very bad fractures, sometimes from gunshot wounds and those types of injuries). But what that means is that the bone is so broken and messed up that you’d be able to see it. Basically, if the report states “open fracture,” you’d code it as open fracture. This is really gross to think about but since we’re coders, we have to. Closed fracture means that there’s a broken bone but it is not coming out through the skin. If the report specifies ‘nondisplaced’ fracture, then code it as nondisplaced.Īll fractures default to a “closed” fracture if it’s not documented. (Displaced basically just means the bones are not lined up right). All fractures default to a displaced fracture if it is not documented as displaced or nondisplaced. These are all found in the ICD-10-CM Book in the guidelines about fracture coding. Just in general, here are some more facts about fracture coding. A radiologist will never say “patient is now in recovery/healing phase.” Keywords for healing is if the documentation mentions “callus formation.” Callus formation means the bones are healing. Sometimes keywords in the report help as well. Examples of the recovery phase: if the patient is having x-rays to determine how a fracture is healing= 7th character D. It just has to do with if the patient is in the healing/recovery phase or not. It says 7th character D is used for encounters after the patient has completed active treatment of the condition and is receiving routine care for the condition during the healing or recovery phase. Ok, just like I mentioned in the last blog post, the 7th character is not determined by provider or how many visits the patient has had, or anything like that. Please see the pic where I have the star. Ok, as a follow up to last weeks post about 7th character A, for this week I thought I’d talk about 7th character D and more just about fracture coding in general.
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