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“S,” used in conjunction with the numerals “8” and “6,” indicates that the diagnosis falls into the category of “Injury of muscle, fascia and tendon at lower leg.” A three-character category that has no further subdivision (i.e., no greater specificity) can stand alone as a code. In this instance, the letter “S” designates that the diagnosis relates to “Injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes related to single body regions.” The first three characters of an ICD-10 code designate the category of the diagnosis. The first character is always alpha (i.e., a letter), but characters two through seven can be either alpha or numeric. The more characters there are, the more specific the diagnosis.
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The First Six CharactersĬodes in the ICD-10-CM code set can have anywhere from three to seven characters. So, let’s tear into the ICD-10 coding structure and learn about it piece by piece.
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The ICD-10 head-scratching stops today-at least with respect to the structure of the codes-because the codes are segmented in a standardized fashion, which means they break down into smaller (and less intimidating) bite-sized pieces. ICD-10-CM has been the standard diagnosis coding set for a while now-since 2015, in fact-but it’s complicated enough to cause the occasional head-scratch for members of the healthcare community.