5 Scary Things You should Know: What ICD-10 does to your Halloween

Halloween witnesses this time the recently laid ICD-10, and you will find how interestingly ICD-10 relates to dealing with some scary Halloween characters by describing them in strange codes. Ever since its inception, ICD-10 has creative a good and chilling experience among its audience. It will surprise many of us when it can influence so much of your festival though it better doesn’t.  Listed below are a few codes that will shock, surprise or super-excite you right now:

F40.210 Arachnophobia

Remember the 1990 film Arachnophobia, starring John Goodman and Jeff Daniels? Halloween this season brings the horror back. Derived from the Greek,  aráchnē, spider and phóbos, that is fear arachnophobia makes people feel uneasy and doubtful in any place they suspect the presence of spiders.

Even the sight of a spider-web can make these patients uncomfortable, and that calls for the ICD-10 code, F40.210. Though similar code was present in ICD-9 as well (see code 300.29 ICD-9), only your medical billing company is the best person to clinically interpret the situation and give you the most accurate conversion codes for this specific coding situation.

R-44.0  Auditory hallucinations

Just heard someone said something to you? Check around, if there’s no one present and you show symptoms of auditory hallucinations, this code is here to speak out what needs to be done.

R-44.1 visual hallucinations

Where do you feel when you just realize that you sometimes see things that don’t exist, never existed? With R-44.0 covering this billing situation, your reimbursement claims in this from October 1, 2015, will require an application of ICD-10 codes.

R46.1 Bizarre personal appearance

Taken from Chapter XVIII of the ICD-10, code R46.1 deals with medical conditions described as bizarre personal appearance. Aptly put together with the situations like “very low level of personal hygiene” (R46.0), “strange and inexplicable behavior” (R46.2), this code may have various interpretations and applications.

Consult your medical biller to see if a particular case falls under this or not. This Halloween, it’s better to recall this code so that you know how to bill someone looking weird and scary.

F51.5 nightmare disorder

A sleep disorder compounded by the recurring nightmare is a frequent case these days. Around 10-50% of children falling in the bracket of 3-6 years of age suffer from disturbing sleep, and up to 85% of adults confess having similar conditions in the last year.

Your Halloween experiences may not be that dramatic (or traumatic) but one can never tell! To deal with such cases, ICD-10 has a provision under the code F51.5. Best to ask your medical billing company more about such dream anxiety disorders, and you get the most accurate and clinically accepted interpretation.