Place of Service Codes in Medical Billing: Complete List & Guide

Place of service codes in medical billing are two-digit codes that identify where a patient received a service. Payers use them to decide more than location: the code drives the site-of-service payment rate, interacts with telehealth rules, and must match the provider's enrollment. A service can be medically necessary, correctly coded, and properly authorized — and still deny because the code did not match where the encounter happened.

Because the code is small, it is easy to treat as a default. Many systems carry a POS value forward from a template or prior visit, and nobody reviews it until a denial arrives. This guide explains where the codes live on the claim, lists the ones practices use most, and shows how a pre-submission check keeps POS errors out of your denial queue.

Where Place of Service Codes Appear on the Claim

On the CMS-1500 form, the place of service code goes in Box 24B for each service line. Lines on the same claim can carry different codes when services were rendered in different settings, although most claims use one code throughout. In the electronic 837P, most clearinghouses map the value directly from Box 24B.

Facility claims on the UB-04 form work differently: the UB-04 does not use place of service codes, describing the setting through the type of bill and revenue codes instead. When a professional service is performed inside a facility, the facility bills on the UB-04 while the physician bills the professional component on the CMS-1500 — and that claim must carry the POS code for the facility setting, not the provider's office.

Common Place of Service Codes

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services maintains the full code set. The table below covers the codes most practices use daily.

Code	Place of service	Billing notes
02	Telehealth other than in patient's home	Patient is somewhere other than home during a telehealth service; Medicare generally pays the facility rate
10	Telehealth provided in patient's home	Patient is home during the telehealth service; Medicare generally pays the non-facility rate
11	Office	Standard code for services in a provider's office; paid at the non-facility rate
12	Home	Service furnished in a private residence; used for home visits, not telehealth from the patient's home
19	Off-campus outpatient hospital	Hospital department located away from the main campus; paid at the facility rate
21	Inpatient hospital	Patient has been formally admitted as an inpatient; professional services during the stay use this code
22	On-campus outpatient hospital	Outpatient department on the hospital campus, including hospital clinics; paid at the facility rate
23	Emergency room — hospital	Services in a hospital emergency department, whether or not the patient is admitted afterward
24	Ambulatory surgical center	Facility where outpatient surgery is performed and the patient is released the same day
31	Skilled nursing facility	Facility with skilled nursing and rehabilitation services, typically after a qualifying hospital stay
32	Nursing facility	Facility providing nursing care for residents who do not require hospital or skilled care
49	Independent clinic	Location, not part of a hospital or physician office, where health services are routinely provided
53	Community mental health center	Facility providing partial hospitalization and outpatient mental health services

Other codes exist — schools (03), urgent care (20), hospice (34) — but the codes above cover most professional claims. What matters is that the code matches the documented location of each encounter, every time.

POS 11 vs 22: The Site-of-Service Payment Differential

The most financially important distinction is between the office and the hospital outpatient department. Medicare pays under two rates: a non-facility rate, higher because the practice bears the cost of staff, equipment, and supplies, and a facility rate, lower because the facility bears those costs and bills for them separately.

• POS 11 (office) — triggers the non-facility rate: the practice is paid for the professional work and the practice expense.
• POS 22 (on-campus outpatient hospital) — triggers the facility rate: the physician is paid the professional component, and the hospital bills a separate facility fee.

Billing POS 11 for a service performed in a hospital-owned clinic overstates the practice expense and can be treated as an overpayment when audited. Billing POS 22 for a true office visit understates payment and leaves revenue uncollected. The same logic applies to POS 19, which also pays at the facility rate. When a practice is acquired or converted to a provider-based department, the correct code can change even though the exam room and staff stay the same — so every location or enrollment change should trigger a review of the POS value in your system.

Telehealth: POS 02 vs 10 and Modifiers 95 and 93

Telehealth has two dedicated codes, and the difference is where the patient is located during the visit:

• POS 02 — the patient is somewhere other than their home: another clinic, a school, or a workplace.
• POS 10 — the patient is in their home during the encounter.

For Medicare, POS 10 generally pays at the non-facility rate, while POS 02 generally pays at the facility rate. Commercial policies vary, and some payers still instruct practices to bill the POS that would have applied in person, with a telehealth modifier doing the identifying work. That is why the modifier matters as much as the code: modifier 95 identifies a synchronous audio-video service, and modifier 93 identifies a synchronous audio-only (telephone) service. Confirming which combination each payer requires belongs in eligibility verification before the visit, not a guess at claim time. Our telehealth billing guide covers payer rules in detail; here, the point is that POS and modifier must tell the same story on every claim.

Common POS Mistakes That Cause Denials

Place of service errors produce a recognizable set of denials and payment problems:

• Template defaults left unchanged — the office code carries onto hospital rounds or home visits because nobody edited the default at charge entry.
• POS inconsistent with the procedure — a setting where the billed procedure cannot plausibly occur triggers payer edits and medical review.
• Mismatch with the facility's claim — the professional claim reports POS 11 while the hospital bills a facility claim for the same encounter, a discrepancy payers detect by matching claims.
• Wrong telehealth combination — POS 10 without the required modifier, or modifier 95 on an in-person POS, causing denials or the wrong rate.
• Stale location records — the practice relocated or became provider-based, but the system still uses the old POS, mispricing every claim from that location.
• Inpatient codes without an admission — POS 21 used for a patient in observation status, who is an outpatient and should carry the outpatient hospital code.

Most of these are workflow problems, not knowledge problems: the correct information exists in the schedule or note, but nothing compares it against the claim before submission.

How Elite Bill Care Checks POS Before Submission

Elite Bill Care treats place of service as a claim-scrubbing checkpoint, not a default. Before a claim is released, we compare its POS against the encounter record — visit type, scheduled location, and documentation. Telehealth claims are checked for the POS and modifier combination each payer requires, and facility-setting claims are matched against the expected facility POS.

When a pattern surfaces, we fix it at the source in your system rather than correcting claims one at a time. Our team works inside Epic, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, AdvancedMD, Tebra, and NextGen, follows HIPAA-compliant processes, and supports practices in all 50 states. That discipline is how our clients maintain a 98% first-pass clean claim rate and achieve up to 30% denial reduction — and with 10+ years of experience, we catch POS errors in minutes, not in denial reports weeks later.

Related pages

• CMS-1500 Form Guide: All 33 Boxes Explained
• Telehealth Medical Billing Guide
• Medical Billing Modifiers: The Complete Guide With Examples
• Medical Billing by Specialty

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