W74 — Unspecified cause of accidental drowning and submersion
W74 is a non-billable header ICD-10-CM code for unspecified cause of accidental drowning and submersion. It cannot be billed on its own: choose one of the more specific child codes below. This code also requires a 7th character before it is complete.
This code requires a 7th character
The appropriate 7th character is to be added to code W74
- A
- initial encounter
- D
- subsequent encounter
- S
- sequela
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Drowning NOS
Other codes that can never be billed with W74
These codes carry an Excludes1 note pointing at W74. The conflict binds both ways, but ICD-10-CM only writes it down on one side — so you would not find this by reading W74 alone.
- W16Fall, jump or diving into water
Risk adjustment
W74 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.
How W74 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 W74.
- Drowning(accidental)
Code to one of these instead W74
3 child codes. Green means billable.
Questions about W74
- Is W74 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- No. W74 is a non-billable header code. Code to a higher level of specificity using one of its child codes.
- Where does W74 sit in the tabular list?
- External causes of morbidity (V00-Y99), in the block Accidental non-transport drowning and submersion (W65-W74).