By Namwook Cho L.Ac.
For us, taking care with low back pain is common, and an M54.5 is the ICD-10 code for low back pain, and claiming using it is familiar to most acupuncturists.
There has been a minor change to the current ICD-10 code. For example, M54.5 is not used anymore because it was changed to M54.50. Now, M54.50 is for unspecified back pain, M54.51 is for vertebrogenic back pain, and M54.59 is for other back pain. Therefore, if you treated a patient after October 1st, 2021, and need to claim your treatment to insurance company, you should use M54.50.
There also are updates regarding cough. R05.1 acute cough, R05.2 subacute cough, and R05.3 chronic cough are added.
The last update is for headaches. There are many different kinds of headaches, but we frequently see headaches caused by neck or shoulder muscle tension. Now for the case, a new code for cervicogenic headache G44.86 could be used by acupuncturists.
