Please note: Help Therapy takes on all of your billing, so if you ever have billing questions, do not hesitate to reach out to us -- contact your Provider Relations Manager or email our billing team at [email protected].
That said - it is great practice to understand what a diagnosis codes are and how to find the appropriate ones to include on your billing sheet (attached for reference).
So, what is a Diagnosis Code?
A diagnosis code is combination of letters and/or numbers assigned to a particular diagnosis, symptom or procedure. In health care, diagnosis codes are used as a tool to group and identify diseases, disorders, symptoms, poisonings, adverse effects of drugs and chemicals, injuries and other reasons for patient encounters.
An example of an ICD-10 diagnosis code is F41.9 which is the diagnosis code for anxiety disorder, unspecified
Other common diagnosis codes used by therapists include F32.9 (for a major depressive episode - unspecified) or F33.9 for major recurrent depression and F32.0 (for a single minor depressive episode) or F33.0 for minor recurrent depression. You can find the tools on how to look for appropriate diagnosis codes for your patients below.
An ICD-10 diagnosis code is the standard transaction code set for diagnostic purposes under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It is used to track health care statistics/disease burden, quality outcomes, mortality statistics and billing. As referenced in the note below, ICD-11 codes will take effect in 2022 and this article will be updated.
ICD-10 codes identify medical diagnoses and help insurance companies understand why the care you were provided was necessary.
How do you find the correct Diagnosis Code to include on your billing sheet?
There are many great resources for looking up diagnosis codes online. We found that the platform linked below works really well for us as it allows you to search by diagnosis quickly and easily and also helps define the codes so you can quickly and easily deduce which codes apply to your patient.
https://www.icd10data.com/ICD10CM/Codes
You can also find commonly used mental health codes listed here.
Other tools for looking up quick diagnosis codes include going direct to the source on the CDC's website: https://icd10cmtool.cdc.gov/..
What we like best about icd10data.com is that it allows you to read about the code as your familiarizing yourself with this process of diagnosis. We have a screen shot of an example below. Please note, it's not the prettiest site, but does give a lot of great information (you will get ads on this site!).
When searching for "anxiety" it is going to give me all symptoms that may apply to the code, allowing me to choose the best diagnosis code for my patient.
Don't stress though, we are here to help if you need it.
Finally, how do I record my diagnosis code on my billing sheet.
You simply write the appropriate diagnosis code under where it says ICD-10 on the billing sheet (screenshot below). You can put more than one diagnosis code on your billing sheet if more than one apply to your patient. If a patient's diagnosis changes throughout therapy, simply write the new diagnosis on your billing sheet.
NOTE: WHO has released the ICD-11 Codes but they have NOT been implemented in the US yet.
What are the ICD-11 Codes going to be?
In 2022, the ICD codes will change again with the addition of two numbers—one that precedes the letter and one that comes at the end. For example, X98.6 (ICD-10 code) will become 0X98.60. The updated code also does not use letters "I" or "O" to avoid confusion with 1 and 0.6.
This has not been updated in the United States as of Aug 29, 2022. Please continue to use ICD-10 diagnosis codes.