When documenting for external cause status codes, what information is included?

When documenting for external cause status codes, it is essential to include information about the patient's work status during the injury. This is critical because external cause codes are designed to provide context regarding the circumstances leading to an injury or health condition, which often includes whether the injury occurred at work, during leisure activities, or other scenarios. By documenting the work status, the coder can accurately classify the nature of the incident and its relation to the patient's employment, which is particularly relevant for claims processing and public health data.

The other types of information, such as the patient's age and gender or prior surgical history, do not directly pertain to the external circumstances of the injury represented by the external cause codes. Furthermore, focusing solely on acute health conditions also fails to capture the broader context that external cause codes are meant to convey, which includes the circumstances that led to the injury rather than just the health implications of that injury.