Question

Patient diagnosed with an infection due to MRSA and the infection has a combination code that includes the causal organism. What is the code for the causal organism?

Answer 1

MRSA infections are coded in medical systems like ICD-10 to include both the infection and the causal organism. MRSA is resistant to common antibiotics, necessitating appropriate antibiotic selection based on sensitivity tests.

Step-by-step explanation:

When a patient is diagnosed with an infection due to Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), medical coders use specific codes to denote both the infection itself and the causal organism. These codes come from standardized systems like ICD-10, which healthcare providers use to classify and code all diagnoses, symptoms, and procedures. Community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) has a younger average patient age and can affect healthy individuals outside of healthcare settings as well, while hospital-acquired MRSA (HA-MRSA) is more common in healthcare facilities with an older average patient age. Given the resistance of MRSA to many commonly used antibiotics such as methicillin, amoxicillin, penicillin, and oxacillin, it's crucial to use the right antibiotics like trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMZ), clindamycin, tetracycline, or linezolid, often decided based on antibiotic sensitivity tests.