Certified Electronic Health Records Specialist (CEHRS) Practice Exam

ICD-10-PCS is primarily used for which type of care?

1. Outpatient care

2. Emergency care

3. Inpatient care

4. Preventative care

The correct answer is: Inpatient care

ICD-10-PCS, which stands for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Procedure Coding System, is specifically designed to capture the details of inpatient procedures. This coding system is utilized for the classification of surgical procedures and other interventions performed during a patient's stay in the hospital. It provides healthcare professionals and institutions with a standardized method to record procedures so that they can be properly billed to insurance companies and analyzed for healthcare statistics and research. Inpatient care involves patients who are admitted to the hospital, and the ICD-10-PCS codes are particularly important for this setting as they help in documenting the complexity and variations of the surgical and therapeutic procedures that occur during a patient's hospitalization. This is vital for various purposes, including reimbursement, quality assessment, and review of healthcare outcomes. In contrast, the other types of care—outpatient, emergency, and preventative—typically use different coding systems. Outpatient care primarily relies on CPT codes for procedures conducted in an office or outpatient setting. Emergency care may involve a mix of coding systems but generally also focuses more on CPT codes and ICD-10-CM for diagnoses rather than the ICD-10-PCS, which is focused on inpatient procedures. Preventative care focuses on health maintenance and disease prevention, generally