CARC 13
Date of death precedes the service
The payer holds a date of death earlier than the date of service.
Why you actually get this
- The payer's record is wrong, which happens more often than practices expect.
- The date of service was keyed incorrectly.
- Patient identity was confused with another record.
How to check whether it’s correct
- 01Confirm the date of service on the claim.
- 02Verify patient identity against the record.
- 03Ask the payer what date of death it holds and on what basis.
Usually worth appealing
If the care was delivered, this is a records error somewhere and is resolvable. Payers do hold incorrect dates of death, and they will correct them when challenged with evidence.
Often arrives with
Seeing a lot of these?
A single denial is a claim to work. A pattern of the same denial is a process to fix, and the two need completely different responses. A free panel reads ninety days of your claims data and shows which codes actually recur for you.
Claim Adjustment Reason Codes are maintained by X12 as External Code List 139. The official description of this code is theirs and is not reproduced here. Check the authoritative list for current wording and status.