Effective Date for COVID-19 ICD-10-CM Code Moved to April 1

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today that due to the “urgent need to capture the reporting of [COVID-19] in our nation’s claims and surveillance data,” the agency has changed the effective date of new diagnosis code U07.1, COVID-19, from Oct. 1, to April 1, 2020.

According to the CDC, “this off-cycle update is unprecedented and is an exception to the code set updating process established under HIPAA,” citing sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act.

During the March 18 ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting when the new implementation date of April 1 was announced, Sue Bowman, AHIMA’s senior director, coding policy and compliance, thanked the CDC for expediting the implementation of the new code for COVID-19 and acknowledged the work involved in making this change happen.

ICD-10-CM interim coding guidance can be found here.

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COVID-19 Resources from AHIMA and the Journal

AHIMA’s COVID-19 resource page is designed to keep HIM professionals updated on the evolving COVID-19 pandemic, including information from public health organizations, news regarding AHIMA’s live and virtual events, and HIM best practices. Click here to access the page.

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Image credit: NIAID-RML, https://www.flickr.com/photos/niaid/49534865371/in/album-72157712914621487 .

Tags: coding , coronavirus , COVID-19 , ICD-10 , ICD-10-CM