Medical Procedure Costs in Colorado
Colorado Medicare physician rates are generally above the national average (+3.3%). One statewide locality, and the ZIP tool still maps you onto it.
Look up any CPT in Colorado
Featured table below is 66 procedures. Search covers 7,500+ fee-schedule codes.
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. These Colorado averages are unweighted means of the state’s localities, not population-weighted.
How Medicare prices Colorado
Colorado's physician fees are set through a single statewide locality, so the Front Range and the Western Slope share one set of geographic adjustments despite very different local economies. The state's indices run modestly above the national midpoint, reflecting Denver-area wages and rents averaged against lower-cost rural areas. Because the locality is unified, mountain resort towns do not carry a higher Medicare fee schedule even though their private-market prices are famously steep. That gap between Medicare's uniform pricing and wide private-price variation is a defining feature of the Colorado market.
Care is concentrated along the Front Range from Fort Collins through Denver to Colorado Springs and Pueblo, where several large systems and an academic medical center compete. Mountain and plains communities depend on smaller hospitals, and residents there commonly drive to Denver or Grand Junction for specialty procedures. Resort-area facilities can bill far above what the corridor cities charge, so location shopping pays off in this state.
Enter a ZIP code to compare your area of Colorado, from Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs to Grand Junction, the mountain resort counties, and the Eastern Plains.
Featured physician rates in Colorado
Office (non-facility) physician rates. Open a row for the locality table and ZIP tool.
Other states
Medical costs in Colorado: questions
Across the 66 featured procedures on this page, Colorado sits above the national average by about 3%. Examples: incision & drainage of abscess $134, skin biopsy (tangential) $100, skin biopsy (punch) $127. Search any other CPT in the box above; those codes are in the tool, not as extra Colorado articles.
Colorado is one Medicare locality, so the physician fee schedule is statewide. Site of service (office vs hospital) and hospital facility fees still change what a patient is billed.
The table shows Medicare physician allowed amounts in an office: the professional fee after GPCI, which for imaging and other tests done outside a hospital is the full global rate. It does not include hospital facility charges, anesthesia, or your plan’s contracted rate; each procedure page adds the full hospital or surgery center total where CMS pays one. Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible, before Medigap.
Yes. The table is the featured set (66 procedures). The search box looks up 7,500+ payable codes from the 2026 fee schedule and applies Colorado’s locality when you enter a ZIP.