VIDEO: PSC Partners announce new ICD code for primary sclerosing cholangitis

SAN FRANCISCO — In this exclusive video perspective from The Liver Meeting 2018, leaders of the PSC Partners organization announce a newly approved ICD-10 code for primary sclerosing cholangitis.

“Here at The Liver Meeting, we are running the beginning of an educational campaign where we’re trying to reach providers, researchers and patients to remind everybody to start using the new code for PSC patients,” Ricky Safer, CEO of PSC Partners, told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease.

The new code — K83.01 — will refer specifically to PSC. The code was approved by the CDC in April 2018 and went into effect October 1, 2018.

“Up until now, we had a code which was K83.0, where we were thrown in with eight other diseases that had the word cholangitis in it,” Safer said. “We realized that was really an obstacle for research, particularly for natural history and epidemiological research, because they couldn’t locate PSC patients.”

“To know that we can now have a cohort of patients for clinical trials that could be identified and patients could be treated with equity is very exciting news for us,” Rachel Gomel, PhD, patient registry coordinator of PSC Partners, said.

Reference: www.pscpartners.org

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect that Safer and Gomel are volunteers at PSC Partners.