N10 — Acute pyelonephritis
N10 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code for acute pyelonephritis. It is valid for submission on a claim.
Use additional code
Add a secondary code to capture the detail described below.
Inclusion terms
Alternative wordings a physician may use in the chart for this same code.
- Acute infectious interstitial nephritis
- Acute pyelitis
- Acute tubulo-interstitial nephritis
- Hemoglobin nephrosis
- Myoglobin nephrosis
Other codes that can never be billed with N10
These codes carry an Excludes1 note pointing at N10. The conflict binds both ways, but ICD-10-CM only writes it down on one side — so you would not find this by reading N10 alone.
- N00Acute nephritic syndrome
Risk adjustment
N10 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
N10 is named in 2 Medicare coverage policies — 2 listing it as supporting medical necessity. Which of them applies to you depends on your Medicare contractor, and coverage genuinely differs by state.
- A55336Billing and Coding: Retroperitoneal Ultrasound
- A56421Billing and Coding: CT of the Abdomen and Pelvis
How N10 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 N10.
- Nephrosis, nephrotic›hemoglobin
- Nephrosis, nephrotic›myoglobin
- Pyelitis›acute
- Pyelonephritis›acute
- Nephritis, nephritic›tubulo-interstitial›acute(infectious)
Questions about N10
- Is N10 a billable ICD-10-CM code?
- Yes. N10 is a billable, specific ICD-10-CM code and is valid for submission on a claim.
- Where does N10 sit in the tabular list?
- Diseases of the genitourinary system (N00-N99), in the block Renal tubulo-interstitial diseases (N10-N16).