• Daniel Schlegel, Christopher Kit Heron, Arthur Berg, Jessica Parascando, and Matthew Silvis.
• From Penn State College of Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Hershey, PA (DS, JP, MS); Penn State College of Medicine, Department of Family and Community Medicine, State College, PA (CH); Penn State College of Medicine, Department of Public Health Sciences, Hershey, PA (AB). dschlegel@pennstatehealth.psu.edu.
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2022 May 1; 35 (3): 491-496.

IntroductionWe sought to determine if there are differences between number of International Classification of Disease-10 (ICD-10) codes per visit before and after COVID-19 when comparing in-office visits and between telemedicine vs in-office visits, toward the goal of determining value of telemedicine visits relative to in-office visits.MethodsWe did a chart review study assessing the number of ICD-10 codes noted by providers at a large academic medical institution in 2019 and 2020. Only in-office visits were reviewed in 2019. The focus of analysis was on individual patient visits per visit type; however, a subset of patients who had visits in both 2019 and 2020 were also analyzed. We compared mean number of diagnoses for encounter types using encounter, billing and coding data.ResultsWe analyzed 211,829 patient encounters. For 2020, 73% were in office. Mean number of diagnoses per encounter for 2019 was 2.65 (in office only), compared with 3.04 in office, 2.76 telephone, and 2.48 televideo for 2020.DiscussionWe found an increase in the number of diagnoses addressed during in-office visits from 2019 to 2020. When looking at diagnoses managed per visit, all 3 types of visits had similar complexity. These results may guide future reimbursement policy for telemedicine visits.© Copyright 2022 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

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