Use of External Causes of Morbidity Codes in ICD-10-CM

The external cause of morbidity codes capture:

• How the injury or health condition happened or the cause
• The intent: unintentional or accidental; or intentional, like suicide or assault
• The place where the event occurred
• The activity of the patient at the time of the event
• The person's status, like civilian or military

ICD-10-CM external cause code reporting isn't mandatory unless a provider has a state-based external cause code reporting mandate or these codes are needed for a particular payer. Reporting ICD-10-CM codes in Chapter 20 of the ICD-10-CM, External Causes of Morbidity isn't needed.

In the absence of a mandatory reporting requirement, we encourage providers to voluntarily report external cause codes, as they give valuable data for injury research and evaluation of injury prevention strategies.