The Most Important 2021 E/M Changes You Should Know By Heart.

No matter where you may be coding from this year, one thing is certain: we medical coders and auditors have been through a lot. Not only have we all served in the trenches of a national public health emergency, but we’ve also been busy preparing for the massive 2021 ICD-10-CM updates.

In this case, “massive” might be an understatement, considering there are a total of 490 new codes, 47 revised codes, and 58 deleted codes. With all of these changes, ICD-10-CM has now grown to a grand total of 72,616 codes and 544 new codes for ICD-10-PCS, for a grand total of 78,103 procedure codes!

With all those code changes to remember, we thought we’d create a guide that we’re calling, “The 2021 ICD-10-CM and PCS Updates, Explained.” Inside, we identify some of the most important changes, broken down by chapters and codes, that you should know by heart, including:

• Chapter One: Certain Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (Infection Due to SARS-CoV-2)
• Code N18.3, Chronic Kidney Disease, Stage 3
• Chapter 4: Endocrine, Nutritional, and Metabolic Diseases