Medical coders are at the front line of the fight to stop human trafficking with new ICD-10-CM codes effective October 1. And the American Hospital Association (AHA) is encouraging medical coders to identify signs in the documentation and use the new codes.
Trafficking Terms in Documentation
The AHA believes providers see victims of human trafficking without realizing it. They encourage medical coders to begin using the codes and educate our peers. The AHA maintains, “Tracking confirmed and suspected cases in the health care system will allow hospitals and health systems to better track victim needs and identify solutions to improve the health of their communities. It also provides another source for data collection to inform public policy and prevention efforts, as well as support the systemic development of an infrastructure for services and resources.” A victim’s only chance for freedom might be a medical coder’s review of the documentation.
Victims of human trafficking are often identified by a numbers of signs, including an unusual combinations of injuries, failure to promptly seek care with hurt or sick, or unwillingness to interact with staff. The AHA encourages medical coders to watch for the following terms in medical documentation:
- Human trafficking
- Labor trafficking
- Sex trafficking
- Commercial sexual exploitation
- Forced commercial sexual exploitation
- Forced prostitution
- Forced sexual exploitation
- Forced labor exploitation
- Exploitation of manual labor
- Exploitation of sexual labor
- Exploitation for manual labor
- Exploitation for commercial sex
- Domestic servitude
- Labor exploitation for domestic work
- Force labor exploitation for domestic work
Assigning Trafficking Codes
As part of its Hospitals Against Violence initiative, AHA asked the ICD-10-CM Coordination and Maintenance committee to create the codes for use beginning the 2019 coding year. AHA’s Central Office on ICD-10, which publishes Coding Clinic, proposed the change.These codes may be assigned in addition to other existing ICD-10-CM codes for abuse, neglect, and other maltreatment. In addition, new codes are also available for past history of labor or sexual exploitation, encounter for examination and observation of exploitation ruled out, and an external cause code to identify multiple, repeated, perpetrators of maltreatment and neglect. Most of these codes require additional characters.