R47.9 — Unspecified speech disturbances
R47.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for unspecified speech disturbances. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Risk adjustment
R47.9 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
R47.9 is named in 13 Medicare coverage policies — 13 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
- A56612Billing and Coding: CT of the Head
- A56729Billing and Coding: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Head and Neck
- A56937Billing and Coding: Psychiatry and Psychology Services
How R47.9 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 R47.9.
- Impediment, speech
- Disorder›speech
- Disturbance›speech
- Problem›speech
- Speech›defect, disorder, disturbance, impediment
Related codes at this level
Codes that share R47. If R47.9 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about R47.9
- Is R47.9 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. R47.9 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does R47.9 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 speech and voice (R47-R49).