Summary & Overview
HCPCS G9930: Patients Receiving Comfort Care Only
HCPCS Level II code G9930 denotes patients who are receiving comfort care only — care focused on symptom control and relief rather than curative interventions. Nationally, documenting comfort-focused status has implications for care planning, billing clarity, hospice eligibility pathways, and alignment of clinical goals across inpatient, hospice, and long-term care settings. Accurate use of this code supports communication among clinicians, payers, and care teams about treatment intent.
Key payers considered in analyses include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna Health, UnitedHealthcare, and Medicare. Readers will find an overview of the code's clinical meaning, common sites of service, and the administrative context in which the code is used. The publication summarizes typical billing considerations, common modifiers and usage patterns (input provided), and notes where input data are not available.
This briefing provides actionable reference material for coding and billing teams, clinical documentation specialists, and policy analysts seeking concise, national-level context for G9930. Data not available in the input are indicated where relevant.
Billing Code Overview
HCPCS Level II code G9930 indicates patients who are receiving comfort care only. This code is used to identify care focused on symptom relief and comfort rather than curative treatment. The service type associated with this code is comfort/palliative/supportive care planning and documentation, and the typical site of service is inpatient or hospice settings where a patient has transitioned to comfort-focused management.
Data not available in the input.
Clinical & Coding Specifications
Clinical Context
A typical patient is an elderly individual with advanced, progressive illness (for example, end-stage metastatic cancer, advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or end-stage heart failure) who has transitioned to comfort-focused care only. The patient is often managed in an inpatient hospice unit, skilled nursing facility, long-term acute care hospital, or at home under hospice services. The clinical workflow begins with a goals-of-care discussion documented in the medical record, with attending physician or hospice medical director certifying the plan for comfort care only. Orders are written to prioritize symptom management (pain control, dyspnea relief, anxiety reduction) and to withhold life-prolonging interventions such as resuscitation, intubation, dialysis, or aggressive disease-directed therapies. Nursing staff perform frequent comfort assessments, medication titration, and bereavement communication with family. Relevant documentation includes the comfort-care order, advanced directives or POLST, medication administration records, symptom assessment tools, and daily progress notes reflecting a palliative intent and discontinuation of curative treatments. Billing under G9930 is applied to patients who are explicitly receiving comfort care only, as indicated in the medical record.
Coding Specifications
| Modifier | Description | When to Use |
|---|---|---|
22 | Increased procedural services | Use when documented work or complexity is substantially greater than typical due to symptom control or communication complexity on comfort-care patients. |