pressure injury vs. pressure ulcer
Our wound care nurses recently changed their verbiage to pressure injury instead of pressure ulcer. Since the two are not coded the same, we are telling our physicians not to document pressure injury. Is anyone else having the same issue?
Comments
check out CC 2016 Q3.
Question:Please advise how to code pressure injury in ICD- 10-CM. There is no entry in the alphabetic index for pressure injury. In April 2016, the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (NPUAP) announced a change in terminology from "pressure ulcer" to "pressure injury" and also updated the stages of pressure injury. The change in terminology more accurately describes pressure injuries to both intact and ulcerated skin. In the previous staging system Stage 1 and Deep Tissue Injury described injured intact skin, while the other stages described open ulcers. This led to confusion because the definitions for each of the stages referred to the injuries as "pressure ulcers." In light of the NPUAP redefining pressure ulcers as pressure injury, can coders assume that a documented "staged pressure injury" is assigned to the corresponding decubitus/pressure ulcer codes? Will new index entries be created for "pressure injury" with the new code update?
Answer:This is a change in terminology rather than a change in definition of pressure ulcer. For the term, "pressure injury" meaning pressure ulcer, code as a pressure ulcer by the site and stage or unstageable as appropriate. The stages of pressure injury used in the NPUAP’s updated terminology correspond to the pressure ulcer stages in ICD-10-CM. Therefore, code a nontraumatic pressure injury the same as a pressure ulcer by site with stages one through four and unstageable. Pressure injury, stage 1-4 would be coded as pressure ulcer, stage 1-4. A deep tissue injury is coded as an unstageable pressure ulcer. In ICD-10-CM, there is an existing index entry under
deep tissue injury:
Injury
deep tissue
meaning pressure ulcer – see Ulcer
pressure, unstageable, by site
Katy