Dr Santosh Guptha

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July 5, 2026

Why the U.S. Must Implement ICD-11: The Antimicrobial Resistance Case

Why the U.S. Must Implement ICD-11: The Antimicrobial Resistance Case Part of the MEDESUN series — Why the U.S. Must Implement ICD-11 Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the defining public-health threats of our time. According to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AMR is directly responsible for more than 1.2 million deaths globally each year and is associated with nearly 5 million deaths annually. It occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites stop responding to the medicines designed to kill them — turning once-routine infections into untreatable, sometimes fatal, conditions. Fighting a threat of that scale requires data. And here is the uncomfortable truth for U.S. healthcare: the coding system we rely on — ICD-10-CM — cannot capture antimicrobial resistance in any meaningful, analyzable way. ICD-11 can. That gap is not a technicality. It is a barrier to surveillance, stewardship, research, and […]

June 30, 2026

Radiology (CPT® Coding): CPC Tips – MEDES

Dr Santosh Guptha Medical Coding Training in Hyderabad Radiology CPT Coding 0

“Radiology is won on four reads: how many views, who owns the equipment (26 vs TC vs global), whether the guidance is bundled into the procedure, and whether the study was complete or limited. Read the setting and the descriptor before you ever pick a code.” — MEDESUN Coding Principle How to Analyze a Radiology CPC Question Radiology questions turn on views, components (26/TC), guidance, and contrast. Four answers usually differ by one of those. Work them in order. CPC EXAM TIPS Step 1 — Read the last sentence first. CPT® only, ICD-10-CM only, or both? Whose service — professional, technical, or global? Step 2 — Name the modality & body area. Plain X-ray, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, CT, MRI, mammography, nuclear medicine, interventional/vascular, or radiation oncology. Step 3 — Count the views / decide complete vs limited. Plain films are chosen by number of views; ultrasounds by complete vs limited. Step […]

June 21, 2026

Why the U.S. Must Implement ICD-11: The IBD Lesson – MEDESUN ICD-11 Training Series

Dr Santosh Guptha ICD-11 Training ICD-11 Training 0

By Dr. M. Santosh Kumar Guptha · Founder & CEO, MEDESUN Medical Coding Academy – ICD-11 Training Series Across this series, I have shown how ICD-10-CM repeatedly loses clinical information that ICD-11 preserves — the rhythm of a cardiac arrest, the phenotype of asthma, the cause of gastritis. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) adds a different and, in some ways, more interesting lesson. Here, the two systems each do something the other cannot — and understanding that trade is exactly why the United States should begin preparing for ICD-11 thoughtfully, rather than treat it as a simple swap. The question a gastroenterologist asks first: where? When a patient has Crohn’s disease, one of the most consequential facts is where in the digestive tract the disease lives. Crohn’s can affect anything from the mouth to the anus, and the location drives treatment: perianal Crohn’s often requires biologic therapy and surgical management; upper-gastrointestinal […]

June 21, 2026

Why U.S. Healthcare Should Start Working in ICD-11 Implementation: The Asthma Lesson – MEDESUN

Dr Santosh Guptha ICD-11 Training ICD-11 0

By Dr. M. Santosh Kumar Guptha · Founder & CEO, MEDESUN Medical Coding Academy – ICD-11 Implementation Ask most coding professionals what a classification system is for, and the honest answer in the United States today is “reimbursement.” But the International Classification of Diseases was built to do far more — to describe disease accurately enough that clinicians, researchers, and health systems could learn from it. Nowhere is the gap between those two purposes clearer than in how we code a condition that touches roughly 25 million Americans: asthma. Asthma is also the single best illustration of what ICD-11 changes — and why U.S. healthcare should begin preparing now, even though full adoption remains years away. The big flip: from severity to phenotype In ICD-10-CM, asthma (the J45 family) is organized first and foremost by severity and control — mild intermittent, mild persistent, moderate persistent, severe persistent — with a […]

June 21, 2026

What U.S. Healthcare Loses Every Year It Waits on ICD-11 Implementation- MEDESUN- Dr Santosh Guptha

Dr Santosh Guptha ICD-11 Training ICD-11 0

The Cardiac Arrhythmia Edition – ICD-11 Implementation Series ICD-10-CM can tell you that a patient went into cardiac arrest. It cannot tell you the rhythm that stopped their heart. For anyone who has stood in a resuscitation, that sentence should land hard — because the rhythm is the entire story. The moment a heart stops When a hospitalized patient arrests, the first question the team answers is not why — it is what rhythm. A shockable rhythm — ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation — can often be reversed with defibrillation. A non-shockable rhythm — asystole or pulseless electrical activity — carries a far lower chance of survival and demands an entirely different response. Every code-blue debrief, every survival statistic, every quality review turns on that single distinction. Now look at how ICD-10-CM lets us record it: I46.2 — Cardiac arrest due to underlying cardiac condition I46.8 — Cardiac arrest due […]

May 31, 2026

Why US Healthcare Must Move to ICD-11 — The Sepsis Case – MEDESUN

Dr Santosh Guptha ICD-11 Training ICD-11, Sepsis 0

By Dr. Santosh Guptha · MEDESUN Global Sepsis is one of the most consequential diagnoses in American medicine. It is a leading cause of in-hospital death, one of the costliest conditions hospitals treat, and the focus of national quality programs like SEP-1. It also sits at the center of the antimicrobial-resistance crisis. If there is one place where the precision of our coding system has life-and-death and dollar-and-cent consequences, sepsis is it. And it is exactly here that ICD-10-CM shows its age. The problem: ICD-10-CM makes sepsis hard Ask any inpatient coder which diagnosis causes the most queries, the most audits, and the most sleepless nights, and sepsis will be near the top. The reason is structural. In ICD-10-CM, a single septic episode is rarely a single code. You assemble it from pieces, under strict sequencing rules: the underlying systemic infection by organism — for example, A41.51 for E. coli […]

May 31, 2026

Why the U.S. Healthcare System Should Begin Preparing for ICD-11: Lessons from Heart Failure

Dr Santosh Guptha ICD-11 Training ICD-11 0

Published by MEDESUN Global — Medical Coding Education & Credentialing Every few decades, the language we use to describe disease has to grow up. ICD-10-CM has served US healthcare well, but it was built for a paper-and-database world. ICD-11 was built for a digital, interoperable, AI-assisted one. The clearest way to understand the difference is not to argue it in the abstract — it is to take a single, extremely common diagnosis and code it in both systems. So let’s code heart failure. The core difference: one fixed code vs. a flexible cluster ICD-10-CM is a precoordinated system. Almost everything you want to say about a condition has to be baked into a single fixed code (and where it cannot fit, you add a second, separate code and rely on sequencing rules). The code description carries the detail. ICD-11 introduces postcoordination. Instead of forcing all clinical meaning into one rigid […]

April 25, 2026

Do You Need to Assign Blood Transfusion ICD-10-PCS Code in Inpatient Coding

Dr Santosh Guptha Inpatient Coding AHIMA CDIP Classes, Inapatient Coding 0

Dr. Santosh Kumar Guptha, AHIMA ICD-10 Approved Trainer CEO, MEDESUN Medical Coding Academy | 22 Years Experience | Inpatient Coding & Hospital Auditing One of the most common questions from coders, auditors, and students is: Should we code blood transfusion using ICD-10-PCS in inpatient coding? The short answer is YES — absolutely. But understanding why is what separates a great coder from an average one. What is Blood Transfusion in ICD-10-PCS? In ICD-10-PCS, blood transfusion is classified under Section 3 — Administration. It is coded as a therapeutic procedure and is never optional in inpatient coding. ICD-10-PCS Example Code 30233N1 — Transfusion of Nonautologous Packed Red Blood Cells into Peripheral Vein, Percutaneous Approach This is not optional coding. It directly impacts DRG assignment, severity of illness documentation, and quality reporting at the hospital level. Why Blood Transfusion Coding is Mandatory DRG and Reimbursement Impact MS-DRG Weight Transfusion may drive a […]

April 20, 2026

AAPC CPC-M Beta Exam Now Open for Selected Senior Coders — Read This Before You Miss It

Dr Santosh Guptha Medical Coding Updates CPC-M 0

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Passing the Certified Professional Coder – Master (CPC-M) Exam on the First Attempt By Dr. Santosh Guptha, CCS, CPC, CPMA, CDIP, CRC | MEDESUN Medical Coding Academy | www.medesunglobal.com The AAPC CPC-M (Certified Professional Coder – Master) is an advanced, 70-question, 4-hour exam for experienced medical coders with 5+ years of CPT®, ICD-10-CM, and HCPCS Level II coding experience. A passing score of 70% validates mastery of E/M coding, complex code assignment, regulatory compliance, revenue integrity, data analytics, and technology utilization. MEDESUN’s CPC-M preparation program — led by Dr. Santosh Guptha — delivers domain-by-domain training, 10 fill-in-the-blank case studies, and first-attempt pass strategies. Why the AAPC CPC-M Credential Matters in 2026 The AAPC Certified Professional Coder – Master (CPC-M) is not just another certification — it is the master-level credential that separates production coders from strategic coding leaders. If you are a seasoned CPC or […]

April 19, 2026

Why Your CPC Certification Isn’t Enough to Land a High-Paying Medical Coding Job

Dr Santosh Guptha Medical Coding Updates medical coding job 0

The Hard Truth the Industry Isn’t Telling You — And What Actually Pays in 2026 Founder & CEO, MEDESUN Medical Coding Academy | 22+ Years in Medical Coding Let me say something that will offend a lot of training institutes, recruiters, and maybe even you: your CPC certification, by itself, is no longer a golden ticket. It was, once. A decade ago, adding “CPC” after your name was enough to open doors at RCM companies across Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, and beyond. Hiring managers were hungry. Seat counts were exploding. Freshers were placed within weeks of certification. That world is gone. In 2026, I am still seeing CPC-certified candidates — many of them intelligent, sincere, and genuinely hardworking — sitting at home for six, nine, even twelve months after certification. They stare at their AAPC certificate on the wall and wonder what went wrong. They did everything the coaching center told […]