WOCN Supports Call for Additional Taxonomy Codes

WOCN has sent a letter to the National Uniform Claim Committee asking that they include additional codes specific to wound care for all levels of nursing. Taxonomy codes are used by healthcare providers to self-identify their specialty based on which taxonomy code best matches their specialty. The Health Care Provider Taxonomy code set is a collection of unique alphanumeric codes, ten characters in length. The code set is structured into three distinct “levels” including Provider Grouping, Classification, and Area of Specialization.

The current coding paradigm fails to recognize the nuanced nature of wound care management, which spans across multiple physician specialties such as plastic
surgery, podiatry, and emergency medicine. The lack of dedicated taxonomy codes for wound medicine for all levels of providers has far-reaching implications. Currently the only code available to nursing is for RNs which fails to capture our advanced practice members. Our request is that the current coding system be updated to allow every level of practice to identify as a wound care specialists.