Q35.3 — Cleft soft palate
Q35.3 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for cleft soft palate. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Risk adjustment
Q35.3 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
Q35.3 is named in 8 Medicare coverage policies — 8 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
- A56587Billing and Coding: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery
- A56658Billing and Coding: Cosmetic and Reconstructive Surgery
- A56868Billing and Coding: Outpatient Speech Language Pathology
How Q35.3 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 Q35.3.
- Cleft›palate›soft
Related codes at this level
Codes that share Q35. If Q35.3 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about Q35.3
- Is Q35.3 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. Q35.3 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does Q35.3 sit in the tabular list?
- Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-QA0), in the block Cleft lip and cleft palate (Q35-Q37).