Coding Clinic for CDI: Deciphering diabetes documentation advice

Call me unorthodox, but let’s start at the back of the latest edition of the American Hospital Association (AHA)’s Coding Clinic for ICD-10-CM/PCS for this review. Here, on pp. 36–37, we have the clarifications, including some potentially confusing—and possibly conflicting—information regarding diabetes documentation requirements. The AHA says it received many inquiries requesting clarification to advice provided in its First Quarter 2016 edition regarding the appropriate way to code diabetes and its associated manifestations. In that issue, it indicated that to further clarify when a relationship between diabetes and certain manifestations exist, additional queries to the physician may be warranted.