K46.9 — Unspecified abdominal hernia without obstruction or gangrene
K46.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for unspecified abdominal hernia without obstruction or gangrene. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Abdominal hernia NOS
Risk adjustment
K46.9 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
K46.9 is named in 2 Medicare coverage policies — 2 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A56421Billing and Coding: CT of the Abdomen and Pelvis
- A56658Billing and Coding: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery
How K46.9 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 K46.9.
- Hernia, hernial(acquired) (recurrent)
- Hernia, hernial›abdomen, abdominal
Related codes at this level
Codes that share K46. If K46.9 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about K46.9
- Is K46.9 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. K46.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does K46.9 sit in the tabular list?
- Diseases of the digestive system (K00-K95), in the block Hernia (K40-K46).