Healthcare News: OIG says ICD-9-CM kwashiorkor code resulted in overpayments

Article Overview

This article covers an Office of Inspector General review of inpatient claims, a diagnosis-code discrepancy in ICD-9-CM, the resulting overpayments and CMS response, and later clarification efforts cited from Coding Clinic for related ICD-10-CM malnutrition diagnoses. It is relevant to hospital coding, compliance, reimbursement integrity, and coders who work with malnutrition-related diagnosis coding and Medicare billing oversight.