The Coding Clinic
The Coding Clinic, published by the NHS Classifications Service, is the technical supplement for clinical coders using the ICD-10 and OPCS-4 classifications to code diagnoses and procedures. The Coding Clinic provides new and updated national clinical coding guidance and standards to support consistent and accurate coding.
The Coding Clinic is now published as one PDF document in electronic format containing current clinical coding national standards and guidance, best coding practice or educational/technical theory and practical examples of clinical coding.
Information in the Coding Clinic that is considered as a national standard or guidance will be incorporated into the next release of the Clinical Coding Instruction Manual and subsequently removed from the Coding Clinic.
As the format has been majorly revised, please carefully read the Coding Clinic Introduction, format and User Instructions sections as this contains all the information you need to know in order to use the Coding Clinic correctly.
When a Coding Clinic is updated the older version will be removed and replaced so only the current version will be available for download on our website.
We recommend that you create an internet browser shortcut from this page for quick access to the latest Coding Clinic.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs have been compiled which detail why and how the Coding Clinic has been reviewed and updated:
Notification of new Coding Clinic release
Subscribers to the NHS Classifications Service mailing list will receive an email notification of a new release. Please subscribe.
Feedback
If you have any feedback on the Coding Clinic please email our helpdesk at datastandards@nhs.net.
Coding Clinic Collection
The Coding Clinic Collection contained each individual Coding Clinic published between November 1992 and March 2011. During 2011 the NHS Classifications Service completed a major review of the Coding Clinic Collection to consolidate current information and improve the format.
The result is the Coding Clinic; a compilation of all currently applicable guidance in a single document. The first Coding Clinic in this improved format was released in December 2011.
The Coding Clinic Collection is now a historical archive of previously published guidance. Coders will have built up a folder containing these previously published Coding Clinics so most hospital clinical coding departments will have access to these and may wish to use them for historical data analysis. Earlier versions of the Coding Clinic Collection (Nov 92 - Mar 11) may be requested from us by emailing our helpdesk. You will need to confirm the intended use which will help us to understand the use cases for the archive.