Diagnosis

The Diagnoses catalog holds the diagnoses your practice uses, and the patterns that group them for faster entry.

Fields

Field	Notes
ID	Internal key, up to 10 characters, permanent once saved
Status	Inactive removes it from use in any patient file
I.C.D.	The standard ICD code
Description	The short label
Narrative Description	Longer wording for narrative reports

ID and I.C.D. are separate fields

The ID is ChiroPad's internal key; the I.C.D. field holds the clinical code. Some practices put the ICD code in both, which is fine — but they are not the same field, and the ID is permanent while the ICD code is not.

Description is what appears on the Diagnosis screen, in SOAP notes and in narrative reports — and it prints on the New York C4 workers' compensation form.

Narrative Description is the long-form wording, used only where a narrative template merges it in. It is where you can be more expansive than a claim form allows.

Diagnosis patterns

A pattern is a named group of diagnoses that are commonly used together, so they can be found and applied as a set rather than searched for one at a time.

Patterns are reachable from this catalog, and from the lower left of a patient's Diagnosis screen. Unlike catalog records, patterns can be deleted.

Keep patterns small and keep the list short

Twelve diagnoses per pattern is about the practical limit — beyond that, finding the one you want inside the pattern costs more than it saved.

The same applies to the pattern list itself. Patterns exist to make entry faster; a long list full of patterns nobody uses defeats the point. Prune the ones you don't reach for.

A note on ICD versions

The ICD field stores whatever code set your practice is currently coding in. ChiroPad does not version the code set, so if your coding standard changes, existing catalog entries need reviewing rather than converting automatically.

Related

Diagnoses drive CMS-1500 box 21, and diagnosis pointing in box 24E decides which services are attributed to which diagnosis. Pointing has a direct effect on what gets paid — see Carrier.