ECG/EKG Cost
Electrocardiogram complete
$15.36Medicare 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 ecg/ekg 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 93000
Work is about 37% of the office total RVU; practice expense is about 59%. 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: $15.36. Hospital (facility) physician rate: $15.36.
Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible — about $3 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 ECG/EKG?
A 12-lead electrocardiogram records the heart's electrical activity through ten stickers placed on the chest and limbs, producing the familiar wave tracing in under a minute of recording. It screens for rhythm problems, prior heart attacks, and electrical abnormalities, and takes about five minutes start to finish with no preparation, needles, or radiation. This code covers the complete service: the tracing plus a physician's interpretation and written report.
What Affects the Cost
- –Setting matters even for a cheap test: an ER or hospital-based ECG can cost many times an office ECG.
- –Freestanding urgent cares and primary care offices bundle it inexpensively into visits, while hospital outpatient departments attach facility fees.
- –An ECG billed as part of a pre-operative clearance workup adds to that visit's total alongside labs and the exam.
- –Abnormal results commonly trigger an echocardiogram or cardiology consult, each a much larger charge.
- –Some cardiology practices bill the tracing and interpretation as separate components rather than this combined code.
How It Is Billed
CPT 93000 is the global code covering both the tracing and the interpretation with report; component codes exist for tracing-only (93005) and interpretation-only (93010), which is how hospitals often split the billing when an ER doctor or cardiologist reads a tracing done by staff. It is billed alongside, not inside, the office visit at which it was performed. Duplicate interpretation billing, two physicians each billing a read of the same tracing, is a known error worth checking on hospital claims.
Insurance & Coverage Notes
ECGs ordered for symptoms or cardiac monitoring are covered diagnostic tests with ordinary cost sharing and no authorization anywhere. Medicare covers one screening ECG in a lifetime, only as part of the Welcome to Medicare visit; otherwise routine screening ECGs in healthy adults are not a covered preventive benefit and guidelines do not recommend them, so an ECG on an annual physical claim without symptoms can be denied or billed to you. Ask why one is being done at a routine physical before agreeing.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Why do I need an ECG today, and is it covered given my symptoms or history?
- 2.Is this billed as one combined charge or as separate tracing and interpretation fees?
- 3.What does an ECG cost here versus at my primary care office?
- 4.If it is abnormal, what follow-up tests would you order and at what cost?
- 5.For a routine physical: will my plan pay for a screening ECG, or will this come to me?
ECG/EKG (CPT 93000): questions
The 2026 national Medicare physician rate for CPT 93000 is $15.36 in an office and $15.36 in a hospital. Enter a ZIP code to apply the geographic adjustment for your locality.
For CPT 93000 the office and hospital physician rates are essentially the same ($15.36). The hospital will still usually add a separate facility fee that this page does not show.
A 12-lead electrocardiogram records the heart's electrical activity through ten stickers placed on the chest and limbs, producing the familiar wave tracing in under a minute of recording. It screens for rhythm problems, prior heart attacks, and electrical abnormalities, and takes about five minutes start to finish with no preparation, needles, or radiation. This code covers the complete service: the tracing plus a physician's interpretation and written report. CMS bills it as “Electrocardiogram complete.”
No. $15.36 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.