tci Part B Insider - 2010 Issue 4

ICD-9 CODING: Differentiate NOS Versus NEC When Selecting Diagnosis Codes

Your Medicare payments could be at stake if you don't report the right ICD-9 code. Are you interchanging the terms "NEC" and "NOS" when coding your diagnoses? This habit could lead you to trouble -- and may result in costly denials if you substitute one for the other. ICD-9 uses the abbreviations NEC and NOS to denote diagnoses "not elsewhere classified" and "not otherwise specified," respectively. But although the terms sound similar, they have distinct differences. "The only way to really understand it is to look at NOS as the equivalent of 'unspecified' and NEC as 'not elsewhere...

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