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Inpatient coding tip: Understand cardiovascular disease

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, July 29, 2005

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Heart failure is the inability of the heart to pump blood at an adequate rate to fill tissue metabolic requirement or the ability to do so only at an elevated filling pressure. Heart failure is clinically defined as a syndrome of ventricular dysfunction accompanied by reduced exercise capacity and other characteristics, such as hemodynamic, renal, neural, and hormonal responses.

One of three types of heart failure is left-sided heart failure. It is the malfunction of adequate output by the left ventricle despite an increase in distending pressure and in end-diastolic volume, with dyspnea, orthopnea, and other signs and symptoms of pulmonary congestion and edema.

When pleural effusion is a documented symptom in a patient with congestive heart failure, do not code it separately because it is considered part of the failure picture.

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the new online course, "Inpatient Coding Module: Understanding Cardiovascular Disease & Procedures." For more information on this and other courses in our Coding library, go to www.hcprofessor.com and click on Coding and Reimbursement.

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