Understanding The Health Language SNOMED CT® To ICD-10 Maps

THE PROBLEM: SNOMED CT® to ICD-10-CM MAPS

As specified by Meaningful Use Stage 2, EHR certification requires problem list entries to have SNOMED CT encoding. Since October 1, 2015, diagnoses must be coded in ICD-10-CM for billing. Personnel and systems now convert problem list entries in SNOMED CT to billing diagnoses in ICD-10-CM. Sophisticated SNOMED CT to ICD-10-CM mapping is required to allow this task to be done efficiently and accurately.

THE NLM MAPS

To meet this need, the NLM (National Library of Medicine) has released maps from over 35,000 SNOMED CT concepts to ICD-10-CM concepts (see www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/ mapping_projects/snomedct_to_icd10cm.html). These are rules-based maps that allow algorithmic derivation of an ICD-10-CM target from a given SNOMED CT source concept. However, in many cases SNOMED CT source concepts do not provide the details needed to determine abillable ICD-10-CM target. Some of these details include laterality (right or left), encounter type (initial or subsequent), and trimester. In these cases, the NLM provides a truncated ICD-10-CM code including a question mark character, with no billable targets explicitly identified.