Q16.9 — Congenital malformation of ear causing impairment of hearing, unspecified
Q16.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for congenital malformation of ear causing impairment of hearing, unspecified. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Congenital absence of ear NOS
Other codes that can never be billed with Q16.9
These codes carry an Excludes1 note pointing at Q16.9. The conflict binds both ways, but ICD-10-CM only writes it down on one side — so you would not find this by reading Q16.9 alone.
- Q17Other congenital malformations of ear
Risk adjustment
Q16.9 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
Q16.9 is named in 1 Medicare coverage policy — 1 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A54111Billing and Coding: Speech Language Pathology (SLP) Services: Communication Disorders
How Q16.9 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 Q16.9.
- Absence›ear, congenital
- Agenesis›ear
- Anomaly, anomalous›ear›causing impairment of hearing
- Hypoplasia, hypoplastic›auditory canal›causing impairment of hearing
- Malformation›ear›causing impairment of hearing
- Anomaly, anomalous›auricle›ear›causing impairment of hearing
- Malformation›ear›external›causing impairment of hearing
- Malposition›congenital›auditory canal›causing impairment of hearing
- Malposition›congenital›auricle›causing impairment of hearing
Related codes at this level
Codes that share Q16. If Q16.9 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about Q16.9
- Is Q16.9 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. Q16.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does Q16.9 sit in the tabular list?
- Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-QA0), in the block Congenital malformations of eye, ear, face and neck (Q10-Q18).