E50.5 — Vitamin A deficiency with night blindness
E50.5 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for vitamin a deficiency with night blindness. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Other codes that can never be billed with E50.5
These codes carry an Excludes1 note pointing at E50.5. The conflict binds both ways, but ICD-10-CM only writes it down on one side — so you would not find this by reading E50.5 alone.
Risk adjustment
E50.5 does not map to an HCC and does not risk-adjust under CMS-HCC V28. That is normal — most ICD-10 codes do not. It still needs to be coded correctly; it just will not move a RAF score.
Medicare coverage
E50.5 is named in 6 Medicare coverage policies — 6 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A56551Billing and Coding: Visual Fields Testing
- A56672Billing and Coding: Electroretinography (ERG)
- A56799Billing and Coding: Visual Fields Testing
- A57483Billing and Coding: Visual Fields
How E50.5 is indexed
Coders do not find codes by browsing the tabular list — they look them up in the alphabetic index, under the word the physician wrote. These are the index entries that lead here, so you can see which chart wordings map to E50.5.
- Hemeralopia›vitamin A deficiency
- Amblyopia›nocturnal›vitamin A deficiency
- Blindness›night›vitamin A deficiency
- Deficiency, deficient›vitamin NOS›A›with›night blindness
Related codes at this level
Codes that share E50. If E50.5 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
- E50.0Vitamin A deficiency with conjunctival xerosis
- E50.1Vitamin A deficiency with Bitot's spot and conjunctival xerosis
- E50.2Vitamin A deficiency with corneal xerosis
- E50.3Vitamin A deficiency with corneal ulceration and xerosis
- E50.4Vitamin A deficiency with keratomalacia
- E50.6Vitamin A deficiency with xerophthalmic scars of cornea
- E50.7Other ocular manifestations of vitamin A deficiency
- E50.8Other manifestations of vitamin A deficiency
- E50.9Vitamin A deficiency, unspecified
Questions about E50.5
- Is E50.5 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. E50.5 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does E50.5 sit in the tabular list?
- Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (E00-E89), in the block Other nutritional deficiencies (E50-E64).