Just when you think that the DSM battles are all over crucial questions regarding the human psyche, you get a copy of an email from an American Psychiatric Association functionary to a National Center for Health Statistics functionary, reminding you that the DSM is, above all else, a book for, of, and by the bureaucrats.
We need to make a rapid coding decision for a catatonic features specifier for DSM-5. Our strong preference, as we discussed on our last phone call would be to have the specifier coded as 293.89 for ICD-9-CM and F06.1 in ICD-10-CM. For use of this code, the instruction is to code the other disorder first (e.g. 572.2 [K71.91] Hepatic encephalopathy followed by 293.89 [F06.1] Catatonic Disorder due to Hepatic Encephalopathy). This is listed as Catatonic Disorder Due to Another Medical Condition in DSM-IV and has not been allowed for use if the causal condition is a mental disorder such as (296.43 [F31.13]) Bipolar I disorder, (299.00 [F84.0] Autism, or (300.82) [F45.1] Somatization Disorder followed by 293.89 [F06.1] catatonic disorder.
I would like to run these options through a CMS program to see if they would be acceptable codes. Can you direct me to someone at CMS who could do this quickly?
Riveting stuff, eh?
