R15.1 — Fecal smearing
R15.1 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for fecal smearing. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Fecal soiling
Risk adjustment
R15.1 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
R15.1 is named in 13 Medicare coverage policies — 12 listing it as supporting medical necessity, and 1 listing it as NOT covered. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A57067Billing and Coding: Outpatient Physical and Occupational Therapy Servicesnot covered
- A54095Billing and Coding: Nerve Conduction Studies and Electromyography
- A54969Billing and Coding: Nerve Conduction Studies and Electromyography
- A57063Billing and Coding: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Esophagogastroduodenoscopy
How R15.1 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 R15.1.
- Smearing, fecal
- Fecal›smearing
- Fecal›soiling
Related codes at this level
Codes that share R15. If R15.1 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about R15.1
- Is R15.1 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. R15.1 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does R15.1 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).