Question

The ICD-10-CM Coding Manual contains the following tables: Alphabetic Index Table of Neoplasms Table of Drugs and Chemicals External Cause Index

Choose 2 of these indexes and/or tables and answer the following questions:

1-What is the purpose of the index and/or table?

2-How is the index and/or table used in the coding process?

3-Can the codes found in the index/table be found in the Tabular List?

Answer 1

Answer: The purpose of the index is to determine about the section to refer to a particular tabular list.

The index or the table used in the coding process is the index which contains injuries such as external causes of injuries etc. The index includes main terms which represents injuries, diseases, cause of the disease etc.

The codes found in the index are not complete codes and can not be found in tabular list as there are chronological list of codes which is based on the disease conditions. So, when we will use both the tabular list as well as alphabetic index, then we can easily assign codes.