Cord Errors

Coding accuracy and effectiveness positively serve care providers, especially in improving the quality of patient care, revenue cycle management, and claims management (Lee & Choi, 2021). This means that potential coding errors negatively impact an organization’s quality of care, claims management, and revenue cycle management. The inpatient face sheet provided for this case presents notable coding errors that could ultimately impact the facility’s revenue cycle management, claims management, timely billing, and provision of quality care. For instance, the face sheet provides Acute Pyelonephritis (ICD-10-CM code N39.0) as the patient’s first principal diagnosis. This information is misleading and affects the facility’s coding quality since the accurate billable/specific ICD-10-CM code for Acute Pyelonephritis is N10 (ICD10Data, 2022). The listed ICD-10-CM code of N39.0 is used when coding urinary tract infection (UTI) (ICD10Data, 2022). Acute Pyelonephritis is an organ or life-threatening bacterial infection of the kidney parenchyma and often leads to kidney scaring (Fulop, 2021). However, it shares similar traits with UTI since it occurs as a complication of an ascending UTI, spreading to the kidneys and their collecting systems from the bladder. This does not mean that Acute Pyelonephritis and urinary tract infection are the same and should be reported as one condition.