Vaginal Delivery (Global) Cost
Obstetrical care
$2,214.48Medicare physician fee2026 national office rate- ✓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)
Get the rate for your ZIP
CMS adjusts this CPT by locality. A five-digit ZIP is enough — no account, no insurance card.
What vaginal delivery (global) 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.
How CMS prices CPT 59400
Work is about 56% of the office total RVU; practice expense is about 28%. 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: $2,214.48. Hospital (facility) physician rate: $2,214.48.
Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible — about $443 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 Vaginal Delivery (Global)?
This code is not a single procedure but the entire package of routine pregnancy care with a vaginal birth: all standard prenatal visits, the delivery itself including any needed episiotomy or forceps assistance, and postpartum checkups. Labor and delivery happen in a hospital or birth center, and the global code represents roughly ten months of care by the obstetrician or midwifery practice. The hospital stay for an uncomplicated vaginal birth is typically one to two nights.
What Affects the Cost
- –The hospital's facility charges for labor, delivery, and the postpartum stay are separate from and usually larger than the physician's global fee.
- –An epidural is billed by the anesthesiologist as an entirely separate charge.
- –Your newborn generates a second, separate hospital account from the moment of birth, including nursery or NICU care and pediatrician visits.
- –Ultrasounds, lab panels, and genetic screening during pregnancy are billed outside the global fee, visit by visit.
- –Extra visits for complications like gestational diabetes or hypertension fall outside routine prenatal care and are billed additionally.
- –If labor ends in an unplanned cesarean, the physician claim converts to the cesarean global code at a higher rate and the hospital stay lengthens.
How It Is Billed
CPT 59400 is a global maternity code: one physician fee covering routine prenatal visits, the vaginal delivery, and postpartum care, billed after delivery. It excludes the hospital facility fee, anesthesia for an epidural, ultrasounds, lab work, non-routine visits, and everything billed for the baby. If you switch practices mid-pregnancy, the global package splits into separate antepartum, delivery, and postpartum codes across the providers, which can complicate claims.
Insurance & Coverage Notes
Maternity care is an essential health benefit that all ACA-compliant individual and small group plans must cover, and most employer plans do too, but cost sharing is real: families typically meet the full deductible and often the out-of-pocket maximum in the delivery year. Certain prenatal services, such as screening tests recommended for all pregnancies, are covered without cost sharing as preventive care even before the deductible. Enroll the baby on your plan quickly; most plans allow about 30 days from birth, and missing the window can leave newborn charges uncovered.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.What does your global fee include, and which common services, like ultrasounds and labs, will be billed separately?
- 2.What are the hospital's typical facility charges for a vaginal delivery and postpartum stay?
- 3.Is the anesthesiology group that places epidurals at your hospital in my network?
- 4.How is the baby's hospital care billed, and what do I need to do to enroll the baby on my insurance?
- 5.If I end up needing a cesarean, how do the physician and hospital charges change?
Vaginal Delivery (Global) (CPT 59400): questions
The 2026 national Medicare physician rate for CPT 59400 is $2,214.48 in an office and $2,214.48 in a hospital. Enter a ZIP code to apply the geographic adjustment for your locality.
For CPT 59400 the office and hospital physician rates are essentially the same ($2,214.48). The hospital will still usually add a separate facility fee that this page does not show.
This code is not a single procedure but the entire package of routine pregnancy care with a vaginal birth: all standard prenatal visits, the delivery itself including any needed episiotomy or forceps assistance, and postpartum checkups. Labor and delivery happen in a hospital or birth center, and the global code represents roughly ten months of care by the obstetrician or midwifery practice. The hospital stay for an uncomplicated vaginal birth is typically one to two nights. CMS bills it as “Obstetrical care.”
No. $2,214.48 is the physician allowed amount. Anesthesia, facility fees, implants, imaging interpretation billed under a different code, and pathology are separate when they apply. 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.