Incision & Drainage of Abscess Cost
I&d abscess simple/single
$306Hospital outpatient total2026 Medicare, physician + facility- ✓Your ZIP's wage-adjusted hospital and surgery centre rates
- ✓Five nearby hospitals by name, with CMS star ratings
- ✓The add-on codes that typically land on the bill
- ✓A word-for-word script for asking for a good-faith estimate
- ✓A private link you can reopen and share
- ✓Everything in the Premium report
- ✓15 nearby hospitals instead of five
- ✓Filled good-faith-estimate request letter
- ✓Bill-negotiation letter
- ✓Printable PDF download
National Medicare physician rate (2026)
What the whole procedure costs
The rate above is the physician’s fee on its own. The facility bills separately, and for most procedures the facility is the larger half of the bill. These are 2026 national Medicare amounts.
Choosing a surgery centre over a hospital saves about $120 on the Medicare allowed amount for incision & drainage of abscess. Ask whether your procedure can be done at an ambulatory surgery centre.
This is Medicare's separate payment to the facility on top of the physician's fee. Medicare allowed amounts are not what an uninsured patient is charged, and not a quote. Private plans typically allow more.
Get the rate for your ZIP
CMS adjusts this CPT by locality. A five-digit ZIP is enough — no account, no insurance card.
What incision & drainage of abscess costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in your area moves the bill more than anything else you control.
Rates for your ZIP, 5 named hospitals with CMS ratings, the add-on codes, and the scheduler script.
One-off payment, no account and no subscription. You get a private link and an email. No medical records and no insurance card, ever.
What these numbers are
Every figure on this page is a 2026 Medicare allowed amount: the physician line comes from the Physician Fee Schedule adjusted by geographic practice-cost indices, and the facility totals come from the CMS hospital outpatient (OPPS) and ambulatory surgery centre rates. None of them is a hospital chargemaster price, your insurer's contracted rate, or a quote. Anesthesia, pathology, imaging reads and follow-up care are billed under their own codes when they apply, and an inpatient stay is paid a different way again. For this code the office and hospital physician lines differ by $28.05.
How CMS prices CPT 10060
Work is about 31% of the office total RVU; practice expense is about 66%. Localities with a high PE GPCI move this code more when practice expense is a large share.
Office vs hospital for this code
Office (non-facility) physician rate: $128.59. Hospital (facility) physician rate: $100.54.
Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible — about $26 for the office physician fee, before any Medigap coverage. That coinsurance does not include a hospital facility fee.
Labeled private-plan and cash ranges on this page are arithmetic multiples of Medicare, not negotiated quotes. Ask the billing office for the CPT code, the site of service, and a good-faith estimate.
What Is Incision & Drainage of Abscess?
Incision and drainage of an abscess is a quick office or urgent care procedure for a painful, pus-filled pocket under the skin, often caused by an infected hair follicle or a staph infection. The clinician numbs the area with a local injection, makes a small cut so the abscess can drain, and may pack the cavity with gauze. Most patients are in and out in under 30 minutes and go home the same day with wound care instructions.
What Affects the Cost
- –Where you go matters enormously: the same drainage in an emergency department can cost several times what a primary care office or urgent care clinic charges.
- –If the drained material is sent for a wound culture to identify the bacteria, the lab bills that test separately.
- –A prescription antibiotic afterward, especially a brand-name drug for resistant staph, adds pharmacy cost on top of the procedure.
- –Packing changes or a recheck visit a few days later are usually billed as separate follow-up encounters.
- –A larger or deeper abscess may be coded as complicated (CPT 10061), which pays at a higher rate than this simple, single-abscess code.
How It Is Billed
CPT 10060 covers a simple incision and drainage of a single abscess, including the local anesthetic and the drainage itself. It does not include a wound culture, antibiotics, or supplies in some facility settings, and a visit charge (an E/M code) may be added if the clinician also evaluated a separate problem that day. In a hospital emergency department you will typically see both a physician fee and a much larger facility fee for the same ten-minute procedure.
Insurance & Coverage Notes
Most plans treat abscess drainage as a medically necessary minor procedure, so it is covered but subject to your deductible and coinsurance rather than a flat office visit copay. If it is done in an ER, your plan's ER cost sharing applies, which is usually the most expensive way to receive this care. Urgent care copays are often a fraction of ER cost sharing for exactly this kind of problem. No prior authorization is needed for drainage of an acute abscess.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Can this be handled at urgent care or your office instead of the emergency department?
- 2.Will you send a culture to the lab, and what will that test cost me?
- 3.Is a follow-up packing change included, or is each recheck billed as a separate visit?
- 4.Will I be billed a facility fee on top of your fee at this location?
- 5.If the abscess is more complicated than expected, does the billing code and price change?
Incision & Drainage of Abscess (CPT 10060): questions
The 2026 national Medicare physician rate for CPT 10060 is $128.59 in an office and $100.54 in a hospital. Enter a ZIP code to apply the geographic adjustment for your locality.
Medicare uses a different practice-expense RVU in a facility. For CPT 10060 that produces an office rate of $128.59 and a hospital physician rate of $100.54 (a $28.05 gap). The hospital’s own facility charge is extra and often larger than this entire physician line.
Incision and drainage of an abscess is a quick office or urgent care procedure for a painful, pus-filled pocket under the skin, often caused by an infected hair follicle or a staph infection. The clinician numbs the area with a local injection, makes a small cut so the abscess can drain, and may pack the cavity with gauze. Most patients are in and out in under 30 minutes and go home the same day with wound care instructions. CMS bills it as “I&d abscess simple/single.”
Not on its own. $128.59 is the physician allowed amount. Medicare also pays the facility, which takes the total to about $306 in a hospital outpatient department or about $185 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and imaging interpretation billed under other codes are separate again. Private-plan allowed amounts are often higher than Medicare; your deductible and coinsurance still apply.
For cash-pay surgery shopping, use this CPT as the Medicare floor when you compare written quotes. How cash-price shopping works.