MCMCB Pro
R03.0

R03.0Elevated blood-pressure reading, without diagnosis of hypertension

Billable / specific codeICD-10-CM

R03.0 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for elevated blood-pressure reading, without diagnosis of hypertension. It is valid for submission on a claim.

Notes

Additional guidance from the ICD-10-CM tabular list.

  • This category is to be used to record an episode of elevated blood pressure in a patient in whom no formal diagnosis of hypertension has been made, or as an isolated incidental finding.

Risk adjustment

R03.0 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

R03.0 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.

  • A57189Billing and Coding: Serum Magnesium

How R03.0 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 R03.0.

  • Borderlinehypertension
  • Hypertension, hypertensiveborderline
  • Hypertension, hypertensivetransient
  • Abnormal, abnormality, abnormalitiesblood pressureelevated
  • Elevated, elevationblood pressurereading, no diagnosis of hypertension(incidental) (isolated) (nonspecific)
  • Highblood pressureborderline
  • Highblood pressurereading, without diagnosis of hypertension(incidental) (isolated) (nonspecific)
  • Tensionarterial, highwithout diagnosis of hypertension
  • Bloodpressurehighborderline
  • Bloodpressurehighincidental reading, without diagnosis of hypertension

Related codes at this level

Codes that share R03. If R03.0 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.

Questions about R03.0

Is R03.0 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
Yes. R03.0 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
Where does R03.0 sit in the tabular list?
Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (R00-R99), in the block Symptoms and signs involving the circulatory and respiratory systems (R00-R09).
ICD-10-CMFY2026-Apr· effective April 1, 2026

Loaded directly from the CMS/NCHS ICD-10-CM public-domain release — see data sources and our editorial policy. If this page disagrees with the CMS tabular list, this page is wrong. Reference information for professional coders; not medical or billing advice.