Otolaryngology Coding Alert

Question: I am looking at a medical chart that says the physician diagnosed the patient with hay fever. I can never remember if I should use J30.1 or J30.2 to report this condition.

Could you point me in the right direction?

Texas Subscriber

Answer: Use J30.1 (Allergic rhinitis due to pollen) when your provider diagnoses a patient with hay fever. To find it, you would start by searching the ICD-10 Alphabetic Index for Fever > hay (allergic), which provides you with J30.1. If you continued to follow the indentations in the Alphabetic Index to due to > pollen, any plant or tree, you’d still arrive at J30.1. After locating the code in the index, you’ll then verify it in the Tabular List.

While J30.1 features a descriptor of “Allergic rhinitis due to pollen,” the Tabular List features several other synonyms that you can report with J30.1. They include:

• Allergy NOS due to pollen
• Hay fever
• Pollinosis

On the other hand, J30.2 (Other seasonal allergic rhinitis) is reserved for when the patient is experiencing seasonal rhinitis and the physician identifies the specific cause, but the ICD-10 code set currently doesn’t have a definitive diagnosis code for the particular condition.