Place Of Service Code

What Does Place Of Service Code Mean?

Place of Service Codes (POS) are two-digit codes that are assigned to healthcare professional claims. Their purpose is to standardize these claims and indicate within what setting a service has been provided.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) keep a database of POS codes that are in common use in the healthcare industry.

Insuranceopedia Explains Place Of Service Code

All professional healthcare claims must be assigned a POS code as per regulatory requirements. These codes are used to specify where the service were provided. Individual parties (such as Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers) typically use different reimbursement policies keyed to these codes.

The POS code set is mandatory under the national standard for electronic transmission of professional healthcare claims. This is regulated under the provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA is responsible for publishing the code sets that all health plans and providers must use in their standard transactions.