I’m in a couple back channels with my man and friend John B. and a small topic came of ICD-10 codes came up and admittedly John had me stumped so I had to jump in and dig for myself to try and figure out what’s what. Needless to say John brings a lot of knowledge to the group, while I bring a little color and I’m on the ready for anything VAERS. So here is the exchange that triggered my dig.:
Diagnosis Y59.0 -Viral Vaccine- Not Elsewhere Classifiable (NEC), external cause of morbidity aka death by viral vaccine is the diagnosis I want to focus on. Then I want to focus on John’s assertion that there is 250 deaths since 2021 with underlying condition Y59.0 in the CDC WONDER system.
Medical billing class 101 - when you see a diagnosis code ending in “9” it means Not Otherwise Specified (NOS), and ending in “0” it means Not Elsewhere Classifiable (NEC).
In other words, if there was a list of defined viral vaccines and the patient presents to physician and does not not know which viral vaccine was injected and injured the patient, the doctor would need to code injury by viral vaccine XXX.9 meaning it is not specified. If this vaccine is not in the ICD-10 book, it becomes a XXX.0 - NEC.
Here is where I’d expect to see a vaccine injury in the ICD-10 system:
Another spot could be diagnosis T88:
So I present these vaccine codes to show that some exist but definitely not for Covid-19 vaccines, and I’m not even sure what the deal is with RSV and MonkeyPox these days without double checking, but the point I want to make for John Beaudoin is that we need Dx’s for Covid-19, and not just NEC viral vaccines.
What is really interesting with the diagnosis code John found “Y59.0” does not even technically exist in ICD-10-CM code book and is not a billable code, meaning your insurance claims will be kicked back by insurance companies or the clearinghouse for even trying to use it. By kicked back I mean that your claim may not even be accepted for adjudication as if you never even submitted the claim. Kind of like when you don’t follow the Correct Coding Initiatives (CCI) by not submitting Physician’s NPI (National Provider Identifier) ID# on your electronic claims. Same principal applies, your claims basically don’t even make into the mail room.
This is the exact spot where Y59.0 should be:
As you can see I went right into the lions throat and pulled the ICD-10-CM files and checked myself. For all intents and purposes, billing, coding and otherwise codes Y39-Y61 simply do not exist for billing purposes. This kind of reminds me of the Comirnaty/Pfizer EUA terminology bait and switch bullshit. It exists at the WHO level and maybe the few physicians that were able to find it and slap it on a death certificate.
I took John’s directions and I went to CDC WONDER find these dead people with diagnosis Y59.0 and this is where it’s at:
Here is some data:
89 deaths from viral vaccines was the most I found from 2018 to current, so I don’t where John B. is getting 250 since 2021 from? However where John saw 250 Y59.0 deaths from is not my point, the point is that Y59.0 is even being used?
Apparently this mortality data is coming from death certificates as opposed to any CMS or insurance data:
Grok answer:
The CDC WONDER Provisional Mortality Statistics data originates from death certificates, not CMS billing data or another source. Here’s how it works:
The data is compiled through the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), managed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Death certificates are collected by state vital statistics jurisdictions (e.g., state health departments or vital records offices) through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. These jurisdictions send the death certificate data to NCHS, where it’s processed and made available on CDC WONDER.
Each death certificate includes critical details like the underlying cause of death, up to twenty multiple causes of death, and demographic information (e.g., age, race, sex). For provisional data, this information is based on certificates received but not yet fully reviewed or finalized by NCHS, allowing for quicker release compared to final annual mortality statistics. Provisional counts are updated weekly and reflect deaths reported through the previous week, though completeness varies due to reporting lags and manual coding for some cases (e.g., about 20% of deaths require manual review).
CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) billing data, while used for healthcare reimbursement and tracking medical services, isn’t the source for mortality statistics in CDC WONDER. That system focuses on claims, not death certification. Death certificates remain the gold standard for mortality data because they directly document the cause and circumstances of death, as determined by certifiers like physicians, medical examiners, or coroners.
So, to be clear: CDC WONDER Provisional Mortality Statistics come from death certificates processed through the NVSS.
I took this data and started to build a dashboard:
Further explanation and “How To” video in next article. The point of this article is how does diagnosis code Y59.0 get in this data that is basically driven off the ICD-10-CM codes?
I assert that even using John’s “250 Y59.0” deaths, there may have been a handful of submitters that found this diagnosis to exist at the WHO level or some other country and simply applied it in the submission of a death certificate?
Of course there maybe some possibility that CDC has some kind of automation and the CDC themselves had a hand in using Y59.0 dynamically? What do you think, please take the poll at bottom.
I went to my friend John Bueodain, Sr for advice, input, and response to this article. Here is what he said:
Codes used for deaths are a little askew from those used by insurance companies in medical billing for treatment of the then-living. Y59.0 is a generic code used for vaccine deaths. The codes for deaths are mainly applied by the CDC and not the death certifiers. The death certifiers write English words for causes of and contributing conditions to death. The states then send those electronic records to the CDC. The CDC runs the records through software to apply the codes and then sends the records with the codes back to the states. So the Y59.0 is coming from the CDC. The word “vaccination” gets a Y59.0.
However, if you’re wanting a code for covid vaccine specifically, then there is one. You’re on the right track with the “T50” prefix though those are for living people. I agree that there should be a “T50” prefix code for covid Vax, but there isn’t. As a side note, T88.1 has been used for covid vax as well. The code for covid vax death or injury is actually U12.9, akin to covid diagnosis per se of U07.1.
However, it appears that U12.9 was not adopted from the WHO by the CDC. It has never been used on death records to my knowledge. However (again), some doctors have used it as a diagnosis code for the living as Dr. Drew pointed out to me on an “Ask Dr. Drew” podcast we did.
Interestingly, if you look up U12.9, which was adopted in England in Germany, you will find that there is a an asterisk. The notation from the asterisk states that U12.9 is a subset of … you guessed it … Y59.0.
And that’s the story.
Just do a web search for U12.9. I used it in an article against the testimony of the bureau chief of NH. You should link to it. It explains a lot.
Wow CDC coding games galore. The “U” series of ICD-10 is for “special purposes”, with all the external cause of death codes being V01-Y89. They who that is, could have created a more logical and proper place for Death caused by Covid-19 vaccine instead of using U12.9
Also found buried in the WHO data is diagnosis code Y34 and Y34.9:
The reason U12.9 is not available in the US is the AMA and CDC did not adopt it into the American version of the ICD-10 codebook. I did not even know the US had a different version than the WHO version. At the WHO the only time U12.9 gets reported is by a doctor at the WHO or by VAERS level regulatory agency in other countries. I have sources from the UK where U12.9 was only reported 18 times in 3 years. I would be happy to co-author it with you.
Special thanks to Ms. Zowe, my contributing co-author.
Another Addendum per John B.:
If you want to know the software at the CDC it’s called TRANSAX and ACME. You can find a short user manual online.
One interesting find that Aaron Hertzberg found in MN is a death labeled “eater getting the covid shot” was picked up by the software as “shot” and was labeled by the software as a W code for gunshot death. 🤦♂️🤦♂️
PDF attached downloads available at bottom of this Substack article
Some time ago I contacted the Office of Senator Rennick asking about a redacted Freedom Of Information (FOI) document obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in January 2022.
It resulted from a meeting between the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a representative of the World Health Organization, specifically to study COVID vaccine Deaths (vaccine related mortality generally referred to the Coroner in Australia).
It says: We will expect to see Thromocytopenia (AZ) Deaths in the coroners (secondary thromocytopenia with the adverse effect of the vaccine).
If vaccines mentioned in part 2, no adverse effect, code U11.9.
In the old MMDS system, the causes of death that are written on the death certificate were not converted to ICD codes by ACME or TRANSAX, but first SuperMICAR converted the causes of death to an internal coding system, then MICAR converted the internal codes to ICD codes, then ACME assigned an underlying cause of death, and then TRANSAX combined redundant causes of death using the linkage provisions of the ICD: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mmds/about_mmds.htm.
So if there's some ICD code which suddenly became more common at the start of 2022, it might be due to the switch from SuperMICAR and MICAR to MedCoder.
For example the number of deaths with MCD N28.8 (Other specified disorders of kidney and ureter) dropped to near zero between December 2021 and January 2022, but N17 (Acute renal failure) had a big increase between December 2021 and January 2022 after which it remained at an elevated level. Or really the increase in N17 was distributed across the whole year of 2021, but there seems to have been a further increase between December 2021 and January 2022 that was mirrored by the sudden drop in deaths with N28.8: https://sars2.net/beaudoin.html. But if you exclude deaths with MCD COVID, then the overall number of deaths with a kidney-related MCD has remained roughly stable since 2020.
Beaudoin also showed that between 2021 and 2022 there was a huge increase in deaths with MCD L98.8 (Other specified disorders of skin and subcutaneous tissue). But he only showed yearly data so you couldn't see that the increase specifically happened between December 2021 and January 2022, and there were more deaths during each month of 2022 than any month of 2021. So I suspect it might have also been due to the switch from SuperMICAR and MICAR to MedCoder: https://sars2.net/beaudoin.html#Increase_in_deaths_with_MCD_other_specified_disorders_of_skin_and_subcutaneous_tissue.
Some time ago I contacted the Office of Senator Rennick asking about a redacted Freedom Of Information (FOI) document obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in January 2022.
It resulted from a meeting between the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a representative of the World Health Organization, specifically to study COVID vaccine Deaths (vaccine related mortality generally referred to the Coroner in Australia).
It says: We will expect to see Thromocytopenia (AZ) Deaths in the coroners (secondary thromocytopenia with the adverse effect of the vaccine).
If vaccines mentioned in part 2, no adverse effect, code U11.9.
Vaccine causing adverse effect code REDACTED
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/albo-does-not-want-you-to-see-this
In the old MMDS system, the causes of death that are written on the death certificate were not converted to ICD codes by ACME or TRANSAX, but first SuperMICAR converted the causes of death to an internal coding system, then MICAR converted the internal codes to ICD codes, then ACME assigned an underlying cause of death, and then TRANSAX combined redundant causes of death using the linkage provisions of the ICD: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/mmds/about_mmds.htm.
However in the year 2022 CDC began to use a new cause of death coding system called MedCoder which replaced the old MMDS system. MedCoder still relies on ACME and TRANSAX but the SuperMICAR and MICAR components were replaced: https://ncvhs.hhs.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Transcript-Full-Committee-Meeting-July-19-2023.pdf.
So if there's some ICD code which suddenly became more common at the start of 2022, it might be due to the switch from SuperMICAR and MICAR to MedCoder.
For example the number of deaths with MCD N28.8 (Other specified disorders of kidney and ureter) dropped to near zero between December 2021 and January 2022, but N17 (Acute renal failure) had a big increase between December 2021 and January 2022 after which it remained at an elevated level. Or really the increase in N17 was distributed across the whole year of 2021, but there seems to have been a further increase between December 2021 and January 2022 that was mirrored by the sudden drop in deaths with N28.8: https://sars2.net/beaudoin.html. But if you exclude deaths with MCD COVID, then the overall number of deaths with a kidney-related MCD has remained roughly stable since 2020.
Beaudoin also showed that between 2021 and 2022 there was a huge increase in deaths with MCD L98.8 (Other specified disorders of skin and subcutaneous tissue). But he only showed yearly data so you couldn't see that the increase specifically happened between December 2021 and January 2022, and there were more deaths during each month of 2022 than any month of 2021. So I suspect it might have also been due to the switch from SuperMICAR and MICAR to MedCoder: https://sars2.net/beaudoin.html#Increase_in_deaths_with_MCD_other_specified_disorders_of_skin_and_subcutaneous_tissue.