Why does only HIP require an admission date?

The ministry conditions pair the admission date with HIP alone, across V66, V67 and V68. HIP is consistently treated as the indicator describing an admitted patient, which is the only setting where an admission date exists.

How is V66 different from V18?

V66 means no admission date was included. V18 covers an admission or first visit date that was included and invalid. A claim that visibly carries a date and still returns V66 usually has a submission file problem rather than a data entry problem.

Does the three-month window run from the admission date?

No. It runs from the date of service. For a long admission, diagnostic claims from early in the stay reach the end of the window before later ones, so the oldest service dates should be worked first.

OHIP error report

V66

Hospital and emergency equivalent

OHIP error code V66: missing admission date on a hip diagnostic claim

V66 means the service location indicator HIP was included with a diagnostic service billing but no admission date was included. HIP is the only one of the five indicators that carries this requirement.

Ministry wording: Missing admission date. Most often affects Internal medicine, Neurology, Hospitalists.

You already know V66. A single rejection is rarely the whole pile. Specialists we work with recover $10,000 to $100,000+ from rejected and unpaid claims, then average a 20–40% revenue increase within 90 days.

Each minute looking this up is about $5 of clinic time.

1Why it fires
2What it costs
3What you can recover

See what you can recover

V66 at a glance

V66 is a V-series validation edit, rejected on the Claims Error Report before adjudication. The ministry condition states it directly: SLI code HIP is included with a diagnostic service billing but an admission date was not included.

The reason HIP is singled out is visible in the structure of the rules rather than in a definition. Of the five accepted indicators, HIP is the only one the conditions pair with an admission date, in V66, in V67 where both the date and the master number are absent, and in V68 where a claim carries both and uses an indicator other than HIP. The ministry is consistently treating HIP as the indicator that describes an admitted patient.

For a practice this is a narrower problem than V64 or V65 and a more awkward one, because the missing element is not an identifier that can be configured once. The admission date belongs to a specific patient and a specific stay, so it has to arrive with the claim.

Why it fires

The claim carries the HIP indicator and the admission date field is empty.
The admission date exists in the hospital record but was never transferred to the billing claim.
The claim was built from an out-patient template and the indicator was changed to HIP without adding the date.
The date was entered in a format the submission file rejected, so it arrived as absent rather than as invalid.

The structural cause is that HIP changes what a claim needs. An out-patient diagnostic claim is complete without an admission date, so a workflow built around out-patient volume has no step that captures one. Switching the indicator does not add the step.

The practical cause is that the admission date lives in a different system from the claim. The hospital holds it, the billing software needs it, and whether it crosses depends on an interface or on a person. Where it depends on a person, it is missed on the claims entered quickly.

Format is worth ruling out before re-entering the date repeatedly. The ministry maintains V18 for an invalid admission or first visit date, so a value present in the wrong shape has its own code. If V66 is firing on claims where staff are certain a date was entered, the question is whether the value reached the outbound file at all.

V66 and V67 describe the same underlying gap at different depths. V66 is the date alone missing. V67 is the date and the master number both missing. A report showing V67 rather than V66 usually means the HIP configuration was never completed, not that two separate mistakes were made.

What it costs

The claim is rejected in full. The diagnostic fee is unpaid until a corrected claim carrying the admission date is accepted.

There is no reduced payment. The item left the payment run, so the full professional or technical fee for the service is outstanding.

Unlike the configuration codes in this cluster, V66 tends to arrive as a steady trickle rather than a single block, because it depends on whether an admission date was captured for each individual patient. That makes it easier to dismiss as noise and easier to leave unworked for months.

A trickle still compounds. Inpatient diagnostic services for a hospital-based specialist recur across a stay, so one patient can generate several rejected claims, and the three-month submission window under ministry INFOBulletin 230402 applies to each of them from its own date of service.

Step-by-step: how to clear this rejection

Confirm the line is V66 and the indicator on the claim is HIP, since the requirement attaches to that indicator.
Retrieve the admission date for that patient and that stay from the hospital record rather than reconstructing it.
Check that the master number is present as well, because its absence alongside the date produces V67 instead.
Confirm the date reached the outbound claim file and not only the entry screen.
Resubmit inside the three-month window from the date of service, which is the service date rather than the admission date.

Take the admission date from the record. A date inferred from the service date or from memory may clear the edit while making the claim inaccurate, and an inaccurate admission date on a paid claim is a worse outcome than a rejection.

Watch the window carefully on inpatient work. The three months run from each date of service, so a long stay generates claims that age out at different times. The oldest service date on an unworked report is the one with the least time left.

If the date was entered and the claim still rejects, stop re-entering it and check the submission file. V18 exists for an invalid date, so a persistent V66 on a claim that visibly carries a date points at the file rather than the keystrokes.

Money you already earned, still unpaid

Recovery is separate work from ongoing billing. Charging only a percentage of what we recover, we review the backlog, correct what your documentation supports, and resubmit. Recent engagements have recovered five- and six-figure amounts, including rejected claims well past the 3-month stale dated deadline going back into 2023.

The alternative is usually your evenings or admin blocks, not billable clinic time. No setup or service fees. Every dollar recovered is money already written off, you keep most of it, and you pay nothing if nothing comes back.

“These claims weren’t chased up on. These claims have been stale dated. You add up the volume of money in there and it’s a consequential sum.”

Dr Sanjay Acharya, on what the recovery review found

Show me what is still recoverable

How to fix it going forward

Capture the admission date at the point the encounter is recorded as inpatient, not at the point the claim is built.
Make the admission date mandatory whenever the service location indicator is HIP.
Check whether the hospital interface carries the admission date into the billing record, and if it does not, assign the capture to a person.
Review inpatient diagnostic claims weekly, since this code arrives steadily rather than in one block.

Conditional mandation is the control that fits this code. Making the admission date mandatory on every diagnostic claim would be wrong, because out-patient claims do not need one. Making it mandatory when the indicator is HIP matches the ministry rule exactly.

Where the date has to be carried by hand, name the person and the moment. The failures happen in the gap between an inpatient encounter being recorded and a claim being built, and that gap is where an unowned step disappears.

A weekly cadence matters because of how this code presents. A block of identical rejections is hard to miss at any review interval. A few claims a week is easy to miss at every interval except a short one.

Is it recoverable?

Recoverable by resubmission inside the window

Add the admission date from the hospital record, confirm the master number is present, and resubmit inside the three-month window from the date of service.

A V66 inside the window is a routine correction once the admission date is retrieved. Nothing about the service or the documentation is in question.

The window runs from the date of service, not from the admission date or the discharge date. For a long stay this means the claims from early in the admission expire first, so work the oldest service dates before the newest.

After the window closes, INFOBulletin 230402 allows claims that reached the Claims Error Report inside three months to be corrected and resubmitted through the ministry stale-date process, with the report line evidencing timely submission. A claim never submitted in time runs through a written application instead, and this page does not set out how that is prepared.

For in-province services on or after 1 April 2023, claims must be submitted within three months of the date of service, not six. Ontario INFOBulletin 230402 is the Ministry notice. Many third-party pages still quote six months. That window is closed for current work. If the original claim reached the Claims Error Report inside three months, a corrected resubmission can still be filed after the window in the Ministry's stale-date process. If the claim was never submitted in time, payment may be recoverable by written application. That is not a routine resubmit.

Related codes

Frequently asked questions

What does OHIP error code V66 mean?: V66 means the service location indicator HIP was included with a diagnostic service billing but the admission date was not included.
Why does only HIP require an admission date?: The ministry conditions pair the admission date with HIP alone, across V66, V67 and V68. HIP is consistently treated as the indicator describing an admitted patient, which is the only setting where an admission date exists.
How is V66 different from V18?: V66 means no admission date was included. V18 covers an admission or first visit date that was included and invalid. A claim that visibly carries a date and still returns V66 usually has a submission file problem rather than a data entry problem.
Does the three-month window run from the admission date?: No. It runs from the date of service. For a long admission, diagnostic claims from early in the stay reach the end of the window before later ones, so the oldest service dates should be worked first.

References

For how error reports relate to the remittance advice, see how to read your OHIP remittance advice and what rejection codes actually mean. Official wording for this code: Ministry of Health, Error Report Rejection Conditions (December 2022).