Carotid Ultrasound Cost
Extracranial bilat study
$433Hospital 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.
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 carotid ultrasound 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 93880
Work is about 14% of the office total RVU; practice expense is about 84%. 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: $189.05. Hospital (facility) physician rate: $189.05.
Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible — about $38 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 Carotid Ultrasound?
A bilateral carotid duplex ultrasound examines the arteries on both sides of the neck that supply the brain, measuring plaque buildup and blood flow speed to estimate narrowing. It is ordered after a stroke or mini-stroke, for a bruit heard in the neck, or before certain surgeries. A technologist moves a probe along each side of your neck for 30 to 45 minutes; it is painless, radiation-free, and requires no preparation.
What Affects the Cost
- –Hospital vascular labs charge multiples of what office-based or freestanding vascular labs charge for the same bilateral study.
- –Significant narrowing triggers surveillance scans every 6 to 12 months, making the per-scan price a recurring expense for years.
- –Findings can cascade to CT or MR angiography for confirmation, each far more expensive than the ultrasound.
- –The interpreting physician's fee is a separate component at facility-based labs.
- –Screening packages sold directly to consumers by mobile companies price this scan cheaply as cash-pay, but positive findings still funnel into insured follow-up costs.
How It Is Billed
CPT 93880 covers a complete bilateral study; a one-sided or limited exam bills 93882 at a lower rate. Technical and professional components split in hospital settings. If a stenosis is found, subsequent surveillance studies bill the same code at each interval, and confirmatory angiography bills under entirely separate imaging families at much higher rates.
Insurance & Coverage Notes
Carotid ultrasound for symptoms, a heard bruit, or follow-up of known disease is covered diagnostically with usual cost sharing, and most plans do not gate it behind prior authorization. True screening in people without symptoms or findings is not a recommended preventive service, so a screening claim can be denied; direct-to-consumer screening outfits charge cash precisely because insurers will not pay for unselected screening. Medicare covers medically indicated studies under Part B coinsurance.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.What indication is on my order, and is it one my insurer covers?
- 2.What does this study cost at an office vascular lab versus the hospital?
- 3.If narrowing is found, how often will I need repeat scans and at what cost each?
- 4.Would an abnormal result lead to CT or MR angiography, and what do those cost?
- 5.Is the physician interpretation included in your quoted price?
Carotid Ultrasound (CPT 93880): questions
The 2026 national Medicare physician rate for CPT 93880 is $189.05 in an office and $189.05 in a hospital. Enter a ZIP code to apply the geographic adjustment for your locality.
For CPT 93880 the office and hospital physician rates are essentially the same ($189.05). The hospital will still usually add a separate facility fee that this page does not show.
A bilateral carotid duplex ultrasound examines the arteries on both sides of the neck that supply the brain, measuring plaque buildup and blood flow speed to estimate narrowing. It is ordered after a stroke or mini-stroke, for a bruit heard in the neck, or before certain surgeries. A technologist moves a probe along each side of your neck for 30 to 45 minutes; it is painless, radiation-free, and requires no preparation. CMS bills it as “Extracranial bilat study.”
Not on its own. $189.05 is the physician allowed amount. Medicare also pays the facility, which takes the total to about $433 in a hospital outpatient department. 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.