R50.2 — Drug induced fever
R50.2 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for drug induced fever. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Excludes1 — never code together
These conditions cannot occur together. Billing both on the same encounter is a denial.
- postvaccination (postimmunization) fever (R50.83)
Use additional code
Add a secondary code to capture the detail described below.
Risk adjustment
R50.2 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
R50.2 is named in 6 Medicare coverage policies — 6 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A56476Billing and Coding: Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging
- A56505Billing and Coding: Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE)
- A56625Billing and Coding: Echocardiography
- A56625Billing and Coding: Echocardiography
How R50.2 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 R50.2.
- Drug›induced fever
- Fever›drug induced
- Fever›iodide
- Fever›steroid
- Steroid›effects›fever
Related codes at this level
Codes that share R50. If R50.2 is not quite right, the correct code is usually one of these.
Questions about R50.2
- Is R50.2 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. R50.2 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does R50.2 sit in the tabular list?
- Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (R00-R99), in the block General symptoms and signs (R50-R69).
- What cannot be coded together with R50.2?
- R50.2 carries an Excludes1 note, which means the conditions it lists can never be coded together with it on the same encounter.