New Adjustments for SDoH Coding Worth a Second Look

There are several new adjustments to the SDoH codes Z55- Z65 in the 2024 ICD-10-CM that are worth reporting.  

I am going to focus on the significant changes, rather than on some of the formatting and grammatical adjustments that were made by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Here are the changes:

• Z60.8 under problems related to social environment, more specification was added to ‘other problems related to social environment’ specifically, Inadequate social support and Lack of emotional support.

For Z62 Problems related to upbringing there were a lot of revisions and additions involving SDoH categories for children.

• Z62.21 Child in welfare custody deleted the sub classification of child in care of a non-parental family member and added child in welfare guardianship.

• Z62.22 Institutional upbringing changed from child living in an orphanage or group home as one classification to separate classifications of child living in a group home, child living in an orphanage.

• Z62.23 is new: Child in custody of non-parental relative.  This was previously listed as part of Z62.21, but now has its own set of codes and subcategories which include the following:

• Child in care of non-parental family member
  • Child in custody of grandparent
  • Child in kinship care
  • Guardianship by non-parental relative

• Z62.24 is Child in custody of non-relative guardian.

• Z62.823 was added for Parent-step child conflict.
• Z62.83 non-parental relative or guardian-child conflict
• Z62.892 is not added to include if the child is a Runaway from their current living environment.

And finally, Z65.8 for psychosocial circumstances includes the inclusion of being at risk of feeling loneliness.

The additions are really focused on clarifications of child environment and upbringing with some additional focus on lack of social support and the impact of loneliness.

Programming note: Listen to Tiffany Ferguson’s live reporting on this topic today on Talk Ten Tuesdays with Chuck Buck and Dr. Erica Remer, 10 Eastern.