MRI Knee Cost in Colorado
Mri jnt of lwr extre w/o dye
$448Hospital 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)
+4.9% 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 $112 on the Medicare allowed amount for mri knee. Ask whether your procedure can be done at an ambulatory surgery centre.
Medicare may pay the facility separately for this code or package it into another service on the same day, so treat the facility share as an upper bound. 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 mri knee 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
MRI Knee 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 knee MRI without contrast (the lower extremity joint MRI code) shows the menisci, ligaments including the ACL, cartilage, and bone marrow, none of which appear on X-ray. It is the definitive test for suspected meniscus tears and ligament injuries. You lie on your back with the knee in a small coil for 20 to 40 minutes of painless but noisy scanning, and results typically reach your doctor within a couple of days.
What Is MRI Knee?
A knee MRI without contrast (the lower extremity joint MRI code) shows the menisci, ligaments including the ACL, cartilage, and bone marrow, none of which appear on X-ray. It is the definitive test for suspected meniscus tears and ligament injuries. You lie on your back with the knee in a small coil for 20 to 40 minutes of painless but noisy scanning, and results typically reach your doctor within a couple of days.
What Affects the Cost
- –The hospital versus freestanding center price gap for knee MRI is large and well documented; this is a scan worth shopping.
- –Insurer authorization rules often require an X-ray and a trial of conservative care first, adding upstream visits.
- –A confirmed meniscus or ligament tear frequently leads to arthroscopy, so the MRI often begins a bigger spending episode.
- –In patients over about 50, MRI often shows incidental degenerative findings that can prompt further, sometimes unnecessary, care.
- –The radiologist's interpretation fee is a distinct component of the price.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Has my insurer approved this scan, and does my chart show the X-ray and conservative care they require?
- 2.What is the all-in price at the freestanding centers near me?
- 3.Given my age, could therapy first make this MRI unnecessary?
- 4.Is the authorization tied to a specific facility?
- 5.If the MRI shows a tear, what are the typical next steps and their costs?
Other featured procedures in Colorado
MRI Knee in other states
MRI Knee in Colorado: questions
Colorado is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 73721 is $214.35 in an office and $214.35 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 $43 for the office physician line or $43 for the hospital physician line in Colorado. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $214.35 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $448 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $336 at an ambulatory surgery centre. 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 $204.41).