Utilization of Medical Codes for Hypotension in Shock Patients: A Retrospective Analysis

PURPOSE: To evaluate the utilization of hypotension diagnosis codes by shock type and year in known hypotensive patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Retrospective analysis of the Medicare fee-for-service claims database. Patients with a shock diagnosis code between 2011 and 2017 were identified using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth and Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM). Based on specific ICD codes corresponding to each shock type, patients were classified into four mutually exclusive cohorts: cardiogenic shock, hypovolemic shock, septic shock, and other/unspecified shock. Annual proportion and counts of cases with at least one hypotension ICD code for each shock cohort were generated to produce 7-year medical code utilization trends. A Cochran-Armitage test for trend was performed to evaluate the statistical significance. RESULTS: A total of 2,200,275 shock patients were analyzed, 13.3% (n=292,192) of which received a hypotension code. Hypovolemic shock cases were the most likely to receive a hypotension code (18.02%, n=46,544), while septic shock cases had the lowest rate (11.48%, n=158,348). The proportion of patients with hypotension codes for other cohorts were 18.0% (n=46,544) for hypovolemic shock and 16.9% (n=32,024) for other/unspecified shock. The presence of hypotension codes decreased by 0.9% between 2011 and 2014, but significantly increased from 10.6% in 2014 to 17.9% in 2017 (p <0.0001, Z=−105.05). CONCLUSION: Hypotension codes are remarkably underutilized in known hypotensive patients. Patients, providers, and researchers are likely to benefit from improved hypotension coding practices.