R19.6 — Halitosis
R19.6 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for halitosis. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Excludes1 inherited from the categories above R19.6
These are not written on R19.6, but they bind it: a note on a category applies to every code beneath it. Billing R19.6 with anything listed here is a denial.
Risk adjustment
R19.6 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
R19.6 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.
- A57063Billing and Coding: Diagnostic and Therapeutic Esophagogastroduodenoscopy
How R19.6 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 R19.6.
- Foul breath
- Halitosis
- Breath›foul
- Fetid›breath
Code history
R19.6 has not changed since FY2024 — no addition, revision or deletion across the three most recent ICD-10-CM releases.
Related codes at this level
Codes that share R19. If R19.6 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about R19.6
- Is R19.6 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. R19.6 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does R19.6 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 R19.6?
- R19.6 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 R19.6 (R19) and apply to it just the same.