I am not in the US and cannot attend the
March 5-6 ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance (C & M) Committee Meeting.
Potential changes to CFS and to PVFS, BME coding were placed on the agenda of the
September 2018 C & M meeting at the 11th hour.
The discussion of CFS and the proposals presented at the September meeting by CDC's Donna Pickett (for which Lily Chu contributed on behalf of the IACFS/ME) were formulated too late for inclusion in the diagnosis codes Topic Packet.
[An updated Topic Packet file was subsequently uploaded to the C & M meeting webpage which had been amended to include the topic of CFS and only one of the two proposals presented at the meeting.]
The fact that the
Tentative Agenda for the March meeting does not include CFS does not preclude the addition of CFS to the list of topics in the full Topic Packet, which should be available one or two days before the March meeting.
Nor does it preclude CFS being added as a late addition to the agenda, as was the case for the September meeting.
The outcome of the proposals for CFS presented at the September meeting is unknown.
If
no decision has been made by NCHS/CDC, it is possible that the topic of CFS and a revised proposal (or possibly more than one revised proposal) might be added to the full Topic Packet agenda for continued discussion in March. It is not at all unusual for a topic to be presented more than once, as proposals are refined.
As soon as the Topic Packet is available (around March 3-4) I will post a copy here.
It would be prudent if an advocate could attend the March meeting.
If the topic of CFS
is on the agenda for March then this proposal by the VA to change its own nomenclature* and how it relates to the NCHS/CDC C & M maintenance and revision process can be raised as a stakeholder question from the floor. Alternatively, the question could be raised via a phone link during or at the end of Donna Pickett's presentation.
*"§ 4.88a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Currently, § 4.88a specifies older diagnostic criteria for the diagnosis of CFS and uses outdated terminology to refer to this complex disease.VA proposes to update the nomenclature for this disease, which is also known as systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), by changing the diagnostic code name to ‘‘Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).’" Source: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-02-05/pdf/2019-00636.pdf
Donna Pickett should be prepared to discuss this proposal of the VA in the context of ICD-10-CM and in the context of the September proposals (and any revised March proposals) for these ICD-10-CM terms.
Details about registering to attend in person or to contribute via a phone link will be in the Tentative Agenda file:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/02/06/2019-01213/national-center-for-health-statistics-nchs-icd-10-coordination-and-maintenance-candm-committee
As far as retiring ICD terms is concerned:
In ICD-10-CM, BME is the specified inclusion term under PVFS (which is the G93.3 title term).
Given that the WHO's ICD-10 continues to contain both PVFS and BME, and given that the
WHO/MSAC/CSAC committees have decided to retain the terms BME and CFS for ICD-11 (and to retain these terms in their legacy chapter,
Diseases of the nervous system), it could be problematic for a "clinical modification" like ICD-10-CM to retire the PVFS and BME terms, since this could disrupt the continuity of legacy data for reporting and data aggregation across ICD-10, the clinical modifications of ICD-10, and eventually ICD-11, when countries begin to transition to ICD-11.
Although one of the proposals at the September C & M meeting had been for the inclusion of the SEID term in ICD-10-CM, neither of
the two proposals presented in September had proposed the
retirement of the BME (or ME) term.
Both proposals had proposed creating
a separate sub code for ME under a (possibly revised) G93.3 title category.
So if an individual or advocacy group were able to participate in the March meeting and raise the issue of the VA's proposal (if CFS is on the March agenda) I think that would be useful.