

What can providers do?Įlectronic medical records (EMR) systems should have incorporated the revised version of the ICD-10-CM as of October 1, 2022. The ME/CFS cases in those records will still be generally coded as the symptom of non-specific chronic fatigue. This coding change will also not fix historical electronic health records (EHR) created between October 2015, when ICD-10-CM was first implemented, and October 2022. This is particularly important now, given the evidence of ME/CFS developing after COVID.

To ensure tracking of all cases, it’s essential that all people with ME/CFS are properly diagnosed. On its own, this coding change will not rectify the known problem of people with ME/CFS being misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. This enables the tracking of a COVID association. This update also specifies that “post COVID-19 condition, unspecified” (U09.9) should be coded when present. This made it impossible to separately track ME/CFS cases. Previously, the US had coded ME/CFS the same as the symptom of unspecified chronic fatigue.

(1,2) This new code will ensure that the US is able to track diagnosed cases of ME/CFS in newly created electronic health records. Effective October 1, 2022, the ICD-10-CM, the disease tracking system used in the US, has been updated to provide a unique code, G93.32, for “myalgic encephalomyelitis,” “chronic fatigue syndrome,” and “myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome” as a result of a request by 7 ME/CFS organizations.
