Skin Biopsy (Punch) Cost in Alaska
Punch bx skin single lesion
$453Hospital 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
Alaska Medicare physician rate (2026)
+14.9% vs nationalSingle statewide locality.
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 $324 on the Medicare allowed amount for skin biopsy (punch). 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.
Your ZIP in Alaska
Look up your ZIP code to see Alaska's adjusted rates, whether you are in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, the Mat-Su Valley, or a fly-in community off the road system.
What skin biopsy (punch) costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Alaska 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. In Alaska the office and hospital physician lines for this CPT differ by $88.57.
National vs Alaska
Where Alaska ranks for this CPT
Skin Biopsy (Punch) and how Alaska is priced
Alaska stands apart in the Medicare fee schedule: it is a single statewide locality, but federal law sets a permanent 1.5 floor on its physician work adjustment, the highest geographic treatment in the country. Combined with elevated practice expense indices that reflect the real cost of running a clinic in a remote state, Alaska's Medicare-approved amounts are consistently the highest of any state. Every community from Anchorage to the smallest bush village prices off the same locality, so the premium applies statewide rather than only in the cities.
Anchorage holds most of the state's specialists, and Fairbanks and Juneau add regional capacity, but many Alaskans still fly to Anchorage or even Seattle for complex procedures. Travel and lodging can rival the medical bill itself for residents of remote communities, which makes planning ahead unusually important here. Tribal health facilities also play a large role in care delivery across much of the state.
This procedure: A punch biopsy uses a small round cutting tool, usually 2 to 6 millimeters across, to remove a full-thickness core of skin down through the deeper layers. Dermatologists choose it over a shave when they need to see the entire depth of the skin, for example to evaluate a rash, a suspected melanoma, or an inflammatory condition. After a numbing injection, the punch takes under a minute, and the small hole is typically closed with one or two stitches that come out in one to two weeks.
What Is Skin Biopsy (Punch)?
A punch biopsy uses a small round cutting tool, usually 2 to 6 millimeters across, to remove a full-thickness core of skin down through the deeper layers. Dermatologists choose it over a shave when they need to see the entire depth of the skin, for example to evaluate a rash, a suspected melanoma, or an inflammatory condition. After a numbing injection, the punch takes under a minute, and the small hole is typically closed with one or two stitches that come out in one to two weeks.
What Affects the Cost
- –The separate pathology fee for processing and reading the full-thickness specimen is often the largest single charge on the bill.
- –Additional punches at the same visit are billed with add-on code 11105 for each extra lesion.
- –Because punch sites are usually sutured, a suture removal or wound check visit may generate its own charge if done as a distinct appointment.
- –Rash workups sometimes require special immunofluorescence or extra stains at the lab, which increases the pathology bill.
- –A biopsy done in a hospital-based clinic carries a facility fee on top of the physician charge.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Why a punch rather than a shave biopsy, and does the choice change the cost?
- 2.Is my suture removal visit included, or billed separately?
- 3.Which lab reads the specimen and is it in network for my plan?
- 4.If special stains are needed for my rash, what extra lab charges should I expect?
- 5.How many sites do you plan to biopsy today, and what is the add-on charge per site?
Other featured procedures in Alaska
Skin Biopsy (Punch) in other states
Skin Biopsy (Punch) in Alaska: questions
Alaska is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 11104 is $139.35 in an office and $50.78 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. Alaska uses one locality, so the Medicare physician rate is the same from one end of the state to the other. What still changes is site of service (office vs hospital) and any facility fee the hospital bills on its own claim.
After the Part B deductible, coinsurance is usually 20% of the allowed amount: about $28 for the office physician line or $10 for the hospital physician line in Alaska. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $139.35 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $453 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $130 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Alaska ranks #51 of 51 states on the physician line (15% above the national office rate of $121.25).