Tuesday, March 1, 2011

What Diagnosis Code to Use While Billing Medicare For Hiv Screening


If you are confused about which ICD-9 code to use while billing Medicare for HIV screening, read on and get to know the right answer:

Various diagnosis codes would be right here, depending on the patient circumstances. For all Medicare HIV screening billing, you should go for an ICD-9 "V" code as opposed to a code for signs or symptoms of disease.

If the screening is for a patient with no increased risk factors or medical complications such as pregnancy, you should report V73.89 (Special screening for other specified viral diseases).

If the patient reports increased risk factors such as past or present injection drug use, you should list V73.89 as the primary code and additionally report V69.8 (Other problems related to lifestyle) as the secondary diagnosis.

If the patient is pregnant, you can go for an HIV screening at three specific times associated with the pregnancy: when the pregnancy diagnosis is known during the third trimester, and at labor. For these HIV tests screenings during pregnancy, you should go for V73.89; in addition you should choose the proper ICD-9 code from the following list based on the specific patient situation:




  • V22.0 -- Supervision of normal first pregnancy
  • V22.1 -- Supervision of other normal pregnancy
  • V23.9 -- Supervision of unspecified high-risk pregnancy.

    Reporting one of these codes as a secondary diagnosis will allow you to bypass the HIV screening frequency restriction of once a year.