Hernia Surgery – It Doesn't Have to Be a Pain in the Groin

Hernia coding can be difficult. Incarcerated or not. Gangrene or not. Recurrent or not. Unilateral or bilateral. Left side or right side. Open vs. Laparoscopic. Mesh or no mesh. Below is a partial excerpt from the Hernia Chapter from Coding Solutions: General Surgery.

As you can see, you can pick the correct ICD and CPT codes for inguinal hernias easily by following a left to right path. The ICD10 code set in particular does not use the word ‘incarcerated’. Instead it uses the word ‘obstruction’ for incarcerated. For a surgeon, this can be misleading because we think of obstruction as bowel obstruction related to a hernia. For coding purposes, this is not the case.

Below is a link to an article on hernia coding. The obvious piece that is missing from the article are the ICD codes.

http://bulletin.facs.org/2017/04/hernia-repair-complex-abdominal-wall-reconstruction/

Coding Solutions: General Surgery has a concise listing of ICD10 codes and CPT codes for inguinal, umbilical, ventral, ventral incisional, femoral, and diaphragmatic hernias as well as codes for hydroceles all in 2 pages with an additional ‘Hernia Cheat Sheet’ summary page. The corresponding list in the ICD10 and CPT Professional code books total 6 pages. Ask yourself what would be more efficient?