How Much Does an Exercise Stress Test Cost in California?
Cv stress test supvj i&r
$82.50California physician fee2026 Medicare office rateUnder 2026 Medicare rates, an exercise stress test costs about $83 in California, from $78 in Chico to $97 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (San Benito Cnty).
- ✓Your ZIP's wage-adjusted hospital and surgery center 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
California Medicare physician rate (2026)
+12.3% vs nationalAverage of 29 localities. Office range $77.86–$96.66.
Your ZIP in California
A ZIP-level lookup matters more in California than in any other state; compare your area, whether that is the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, the Central Valley, or the rural north.
What exercise stress test costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in California 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.
For example 90001.
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 center 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.
National vs California
Where California ranks for this CPT
CPT 93015 by California locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| san jose-sunnyvale-santa clara (san benito cnty) | $96.66 |
| san jose-sunnyvale-santa clara (santa clara cnty) | $96.47 |
| san francisco-oakland-berkeley (marin cnty) | $94.66 |
| san francisco-oakland-berkeley (san francisco/san mateo/alameda/contra costa cnty) | $94.61 |
| napa | $89.55 |
| vallejo | $89.48 |
| santa rosa-petaluma | $84.48 |
| santa cruz-watsonville | $83.64 |
| san diego-chula vista-carlsbad | $82.96 |
| los angeles-long beach-anaheim (los angeles/orange cnty) | $82.77 |
| oxnard-thousand oaks-ventura | $82.35 |
| sacramento-roseville-folsom | $81.53 |
| santa maria-santa barbara | $81.47 |
| salinas | $81.21 |
| san luis obispo-paso robles | $79.92 |
| riverside-san bernardino-ontario | $78.31 |
| bakersfield | $78.01 |
| el centro | $77.87 |
| chico | $77.86 |
| fresno | $77.86 |
| hanford-corcoran | $77.86 |
| madera | $77.86 |
| merced | $77.86 |
| modesto | $77.86 |
| redding | $77.86 |
| stockton | $77.86 |
| visalia | $77.86 |
| yuba city | $77.86 |
| rest of california | $77.86 |
PE GPCI ranges from 1.096 to 1.442 in California. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
Exercise Stress Test and how California is priced
California is the most finely divided state in the Medicare fee schedule, with roughly thirty payment localities drawn around metropolitan statistical areas after CMS reformed the state's locality map. The San Francisco Bay Area carries some of the highest geographic adjustments in the nation, with San Francisco, San Jose, and the East Bay each priced separately, while Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and Sacramento have their own localities at somewhat lower levels. Rural and inland counties fall into lower-cost localities, so the same procedure can carry meaningfully different Medicare-approved amounts within a single day's drive. No other state shows this much in-state variation on the fee schedule itself.
California's markets differ sharply: the Bay Area combines high wages with heavily consolidated hospital systems, Los Angeles offers enormous choice across a sprawling region, and the Central Valley and far north face genuine access shortages. Where you are treated within the state matters more here than almost anywhere else in the country. Academic medical centers in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento handle much of the complex referral care.
This procedure: An exercise stress test, also called a treadmill test or exercise ECG, records your heart's electrical activity while you walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike at increasing effort. It is used to look for reduced blood flow to the heart, to check symptoms such as chest pain or breathlessness that come on with exertion, and to judge how much exercise is safe. The appointment takes about an hour including preparation, with around 10 to 15 minutes of actual exercise, and this basic version involves no injections or imaging.
What Is Exercise Stress Test?
An exercise stress test, also called a treadmill test or exercise ECG, records your heart's electrical activity while you walk on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike at increasing effort. It is used to look for reduced blood flow to the heart, to check symptoms such as chest pain or breathlessness that come on with exertion, and to judge how much exercise is safe. The appointment takes about an hour including preparation, with around 10 to 15 minutes of actual exercise, and this basic version involves no injections or imaging.
What Affects the Cost
- –Adding imaging turns it into a different and more expensive test: a stress echocardiogram bills echo codes on top, and a nuclear stress test adds imaging codes and a radioactive tracer.
- –A cardiology office bills one global fee, while a hospital splits the test into separate supervision, tracing and interpretation codes and adds its own facility payment.
- –If you cannot exercise, a medication is used to stress the heart instead, which usually means an imaging version of the test plus a drug charge.
- –An office visit with the cardiologist on the same day is billed separately.
- –Cash prices vary widely between practices and hospitals, so ask for a written quote before a non-urgent test.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Is this a plain exercise ECG, or will imaging or a nuclear tracer be added?
- 2.Will the test be done in your office or at a hospital, and does that change what I pay?
- 3.Does my plan need prior authorization for this test?
- 4.Will there be a separate charge for an office visit on the same day?
- 5.Who reads the results, and is that fee included in the quote?
Other featured procedures in California
Exercise Stress Test in other states
Exercise Stress Test in California: questions
Under 2026 Medicare rates, an exercise stress test costs about $83 in California, from $78 in Chico to $97 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (San Benito Cnty). Enter a ZIP for the exact California locality.
Yes. CMS splits California into 29 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $18.80 from the lowest to highest locality. A ZIP-level lookup matters more in California than in any other state; compare your area, whether that is the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, the Central Valley, or the rural north.
After the Part B deductible, coinsurance is usually 20% of the allowed amount: about $17 for the office physician line or $17 for the hospital physician line in California. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $82.50 is the Medicare physician allowed amount for CPT 93015. Anesthesia, facility fees, implants, and other CPT codes billed the same day are extra. California ranks #49 of 51 states on this physician line (12% above the national office rate of $73.48).