Carotid Ultrasound Cost in Colorado
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
Colorado Medicare physician rate (2026)
+5.2% 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.
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 Colorado
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.
What carotid ultrasound costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Colorado 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.
National vs Colorado
Where Colorado ranks for this CPT
Carotid Ultrasound and how Colorado is priced
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.
This procedure: 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 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.
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?
Other featured procedures in Colorado
Carotid Ultrasound in other states
Carotid Ultrasound in Colorado: questions
Colorado is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 93880 is $198.85 in an office and $198.85 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. Colorado 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 $40 for the office physician line or $40 for the hospital physician line in Colorado. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $198.85 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $433 in a hospital outpatient department. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Colorado ranks #43 of 51 states on the physician line (5% above the national office rate of $189.05).