CO21 denial code description and corrective action

This injury/illness is liability of no-fault carrier.

  • This denial mostly occurs when a claim is billed to a commercial payer, but the injury or illness is actually related to np-fault carrier.

  • Sometimes, even if the illness is not related to no-fault carrier, using an incorrect diagnosis that indicates a no-fault carrier related injury and can also lead to this denial.

Actions

  • First, we need to verify the status of the claim. This can be done by checking the status through the insurance web portal or by calling the payer.

  • The first and most important step is to determine whether the claim denial is valid or if the insurance has denied the claim by mistake.

  • Call the insurance company and ask the representative to provide information of no-fault carrier, if available. If the representative has the no-fault carrier details, then obtain all the necessary information. If not, then check history and documents or contact patient for no-fault carrier details.

  • Enter the no-fault carrier information as the primary insurance and bill the claim to no-fault carrier.

  • Do not keep the commercial payer as secondary, except in the case of Medicare. If no-fault carrier leaves any amount as the patient’s responsibility, bill it to Medicare by updating the MSP code.

  • If the patient documents show that the illness is not related to no-fault carrier, consult the coding team to review the coding. There may be a chance that an incorrect diagnosis code was used, which indicated the illness related  to no-fault carrier and resulted in the denial. If that is the case, submit a corrected claim, and for Medicare, submit a new claim.

Description