R10.8A9 — Flank tenderness, unspecified
R10.8A9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for flank tenderness, unspecified. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Flank tenderness NOS
Excludes1 inherited from the categories above R10.8A9
These are not written on R10.8A9, but they bind it: a note on a category applies to every code beneath it. Billing R10.8A9 with anything listed here is a denial.
Excludes2 inherited from the categories above R10.8A9
Also inherited, and the opposite of Excludes1: these conditions are not part of R10.8A9, but a patient can have both, so you may code both.
Other codes that can never be billed with R10.8A9
These codes carry an Excludes1 note pointing at R10.8A9. The conflict binds both ways, but ICD-10-CM only writes it down on one side — so you would not find this by reading R10.8A9 alone.
- R52Pain, unspecified
Risk adjustment
R10.8A9 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
R10.8A9 is named in 3 Medicare coverage policies — 3 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A55028Billing and Coding: Lab: Bladder/Urothelial Tumor Markers
- A56421Billing and Coding: CT of the Abdomen and Pelvis
- A56580Billing and Coding: Computerized Axial Tomography (CT), Thorax
How R10.8A9 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 R10.8A9.
- Tenderness, abdominal›flank
The condition this code belongs to
Every code for the condition on one page, which one applies when, and the mistake coders make with it.
Code history
What changed, and when. Derived by diffing consecutive CMS release files — which matters when you are defending a code assigned under an earlier edition.
- addedFY2024-FY2026
Flank tenderness, unspecified
Related codes at this level
Codes that share R10.8A. If R10.8A9 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about R10.8A9
- Is R10.8A9 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. R10.8A9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does R10.8A9 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 digestive system and abdomen (R10-R19).
- What cannot be coded together with R10.8A9?
- R10.8A9 carries Excludes1 notes, which means the conditions they list can never be coded together with it on the same encounter. Some are written on the categories above R10.8A9 (R10) and apply to it just the same.