After the nurse practitioner approached Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont detailing her struggles to track food insecurity through the healthcare system, the insurer went through the approval process with CMS and the CDC, according to a Sept. 28 news release.
The new ICD-10 codes will have nationwide rollout and help identify a lack of food or drinking water, or food insecurity.
“In healthcare, codes are the way we communicate,” said Joshua Plavin, MD, vice president and CMO at Blue Cross. “These new codes are necessary for providers to be able to name what we see using the language we speak.”
The new codes play into the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s Gravity Project, which aims to increase documentation of social determinants of health.
