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Medicare Billing: CMS-1450 & 837I

Loop 2300 HI/FL 67

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Claims require the principal diagnosis, but using the POA indicator is only required by Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) hospitals.

Table 45: Loop 2300 HI/FL 67 Fields
Principal Diagnosis Code and Present on Admission IndicatorSource

Enter the ICD diagnosis code for the principal diagnosis.

Medicare accepts a Present on Admission (POA) indicator as the eighth digit of the principal diagnosis.

ICD-10 diagnosis code

POA Indicator

Though a patient may have another diagnosis more severe than the principal diagnosis, a facility should enter the principal diagnosis based on the reason chiefly responsible for an admission. If you enter any other diagnosis, you may get an incorrect payment. The code must be the full ICD-10 diagnosis code, including all 7 characters, if applicable. Providers shouldn’t report the decimal in a diagnosis code because it’s unnecessary.

If hospitals don’t report a valid POA code for each diagnosis on the claim, we'll return the claim.