The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has approved a proposal to distinctly recognize critical limb ischemia (CLI) and critical limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI) in the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM).
A coalition organized by the CLI Global Society worked in close partnership with the vascular specialist community to develop the proposal, and involved the society’s own Robert Lookstein, MD, and Barry T. Katzen, MD. Other members included Sean Roddy, MD, of the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), Mitchell Weinberg, MD, of the Society for Vascular Medicine, Bulent Arslan, MD, of the Society of Interventional Radiology, and Mehdi Shishehbor, DO, at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention (SCAI).
The ICD-10-CM is a worldwide standard reference set of disease codes used to report medical services provided to patients. The announcement is being hailed as a major step forward in tracking patient treatments and outcomes for CLI and CLTI, which affect millions of patients globally.
The goal of this initiative is to support coding professionals, educators, compliance staff and physicians to identify and accurately report CLI and CLTI in clinical documentation, electronic medical records and medical billing in order to track and monitor patient treatments and outcomes in the future.
“This effort is a first step in building awareness of the complexity associated with caring for patients who suffer from CLI within public and commercial payers and the broader healthcare community,” said Katzen, board chair of the CLI Global Society, which was formed to help improve quality of life by preventing amputations and death due to CLI. “These dedicated codes, now newly identified for CLI, are critical in our goal to improve quality of life by preventing amputations and death due to CLI.”
Lookstein, chair of the Vascular Societies Workgroup and CLI Global Society board member, said: “[We] look forward to continued partnership as we launch initiatives to educate our membership, our hospitals and healthcare provider staff regarding these changes,” Lookstein explained. “They have the potential to positively impact the care we provide to these extremely vulnerable patients across the United States and around the world.”
