What is an ICD-10-CM code? ICD-10 codes are alphanumeric codes used by doctors, health insurance companies, and public health agencies across the world to represent diagnoses. Every disease, disorder, injury, infection, and symptom should have its own ICD-10 code, but some do not.  ICD-10 codes are used for everything from processing health insurance claims to tracking disease epidemics and compiling worldwide mortality statistics.

CCCA and FFA are two different and distinct types of scarring alopecia that do not have their own ICD-10-CM codes. Obtaining ICD-10-CM codes for both CCCA and FFA will help with the following: epidemiologic monitoring,  monitor adherence to clinical management guidelines and track care outcomes, evaluate symptom progression of CCCA and FFA and any associated co-morbidities, assessment of disease-associated medical costs, retrospective studies comparing best practices, encouragement of pharmaceutical research, and recruitment of subjects for clinical trials and patient registries.

Itisha Jefferson, SAF’s Medical Student Committee Co-Founder, and her team are advocating to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics (CDC/NCHS) to advocate for ICD-10-CM codes for both Central Centrifugal Cicatricial Alopecia (CCCA) and Frontal Fibrosing Alopecia (FFA).  Proposals were submitted in late 2022 and the team has been invited to present at the ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee Virtual Meeting on March 8, 2023.  More information to come following the meeting.