Healthcare Price Explorer
Search over 32,000 medical procedures, lab tests, and services. See what doctors get paid (Medicare physician fees), what hospitals charge (chargemaster), what you'd pay in cash (self-pay), and what insurers negotiate — all from publicly reported data.
How to Read This Data
What the doctor receives for their professional service. Based on the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule — the national standard for physician payment. This does NOT include facility or hospital charges.
The self-pay or uninsured price published by hospitals under the Hospital Price Transparency Act. This is the facility charge — what the hospital bills for equipment, staff, room, and overhead. Median across all reporting hospitals.
What insurance companies have negotiated to pay the hospital for this service. Your out-of-pocket cost depends on your deductible, copay, and coinsurance. This is the median across all payer contracts.
The hospital's "sticker price." Almost nobody pays this — it's an inflated starting point for negotiations. Shown crossed out because it's not what most patients actually pay. The cash price is typically 30-50% less.
For clinicians: The physician fee column shows Medicare-allowed amounts. RVU breakdowns (work, practice expense, malpractice) are available on individual procedure pages — click any code with a "Details →" link to see the full breakdown.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does this data come from?
Physician fees come from the 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, published by CMS. Hospital prices come from Machine Readable Files (MRFs) that hospitals are required to publish under the Hospital Price Transparency Act (45 CFR Part 180). We aggregate data from over 2,000 hospitals nationwide.
Why is the hospital price so much higher than the physician fee?
The physician fee covers only the doctor's professional service. The hospital charge covers everything else: facility use, nursing staff, technologists, equipment, supplies, medications, and overhead. For complex procedures, the hospital portion can be 5-10x the physician fee.
What's the difference between codes with and without physician fees?
Codes with physician fees are procedures that a physician personally performs or interprets — things like surgeries, imaging reads, and office visits. Codes without physician fees are typically lab tests, supplies, drugs, or facility services where no specific physician service is billed separately.
Can clinicians use this to look up RVUs?
Yes. For any code that has a physician fee, click "Details →" to see the full RVU breakdown (work RVU, practice expense RVU, malpractice RVU), geographic fee variations across 109 Medicare payment areas, and cost composition analysis.
Important: These figures come from publicly available Medicare fee schedule data and hospital price transparency filings. They are not a quote or guarantee of what you will pay. Your actual cost depends on your insurance plan, deductible, facility, and specific clinical circumstances. Always verify costs with your facility and insurance provider before scheduling. This content is for educational purposes only.
Data last updated: June 2026