Insights Into the 5 Most Utilized “Z” Codes
Z codes are a set of ICD-10-CM codes used to report social, economic, and environmental determinants known to affect health and health-related outcomes. Z codes comprehensively identify non-medical factors affecting health and track progress toward addressing them.
Positive social, as well as economic and environmental, conditions are associated with a wide array of positive or improved patient medical outcomes and lower or reduced costs, while worse conditions negatively affect health and health-related outcomes, e.g. hospital readmissions rates, length of hospital stay, and use of post-acute care services.