WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) & National Center of Health Statistics (HCHS) have created a new set of ICD-10 codes allowing non-Anesthesiology health care professionals to both blame Anesthesia and then bill for it.
“Health care professionals that aren’t a part of Anesthesia spend most of their hours in a day blaming Anesthesia so it’s finally time to credit them for the time they spend doing so,” explained Seema Verma, head of the CMS. “Health care as a whole can earn significant revenue by billing for Anesthesia’s blame alone.”
Currently there are over 70,000 ICD-10 codes, none of which blame Anesthesia for anything. To start, Verma will introduce six new Blame Anesthesia ICD-10 codes:
- IH8-ASA-1A: Unspecified blame towards Anesthesia, initial encounter
- IH8-ASA-1D: Unspecified blame towards Anesthesia, subsequent encounter
- IH8-ASA-2A: Specified blame towards Anesthesia, my car won’t start
- IH8-ASA-3A: Specified blame towards Anesthesia, my spouse is pissed at me
- IH8-ASA-4A: Specified blame towards Anesthesia, this soup is cold
- IH8-ASA-5A: Specified blame towards Anesthesia, Nickelback blows
“We have so many codes and figured adding a few more wasn’t going to hurt,” Verma told Gomerblog, truly excited for the new codes. “And the ones we’ve added for blaming Anesthesia will become the most used ICD-10 codes in history, we have absolutely no doubt about that. Who hasn’t blamed Anesthesia? Even med students feel comfortable blaming Anesthesia.”
CMS will ask non-Anesthesiology health care professionals to specify the number of minutes blaming Anesthesia. Each minute is worth 99 RVUs.
In addition, Verma said CMS plans to create another 100,000 ICD-10 codes dealing with specific reasons why Anesthesia is to be blamed, and admits using Gomerpedia’s A List of Things We Can Comfortably Blame Anesthesia For as a starting point. With time, she hopes to introduce a “Create Your Own Blame Anesthesia ICD-10 Code” for health care professionals.
CMS is considering adding an “I Accept Blame” ICD-10 code for Anesthesia to use; it will be worth no more than zero RVUs.