MRI Lumbar Spine Cost in Colorado
Mri lumbar spine w/o dye
$435Hospital 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)
+4.6% 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 $121 on the Medicare allowed amount for mri lumbar spine. 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 lumbar spine 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 Lumbar Spine 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 lumbar spine MRI without contrast images the lower back, the region responsible for most back pain and sciatica, showing discs, nerve roots, and the spinal canal. It is the definitive test before considering injections or surgery for a suspected herniated disc or spinal stenosis. You lie on your back in the scanner for 20 to 40 minutes; it is painless but the flat position can be uncomfortable if lying down aggravates your pain.
What Is MRI Lumbar Spine?
A lumbar spine MRI without contrast images the lower back, the region responsible for most back pain and sciatica, showing discs, nerve roots, and the spinal canal. It is the definitive test before considering injections or surgery for a suspected herniated disc or spinal stenosis. You lie on your back in the scanner for 20 to 40 minutes; it is painless but the flat position can be uncomfortable if lying down aggravates your pain.
What Affects the Cost
- –This is one of the most shopped scans in America, and prices between hospitals and independent centers commonly differ several-fold.
- –Insurer rules pushing six weeks of conservative care first mean therapy visit costs often precede the scan.
- –Findings frequently lead to epidural injections or surgical consultations, so the MRI is often the gateway to a much larger episode of spending.
- –Contrast is only added for specific concerns like prior surgery or infection, at a higher-code price.
- –Open or wide-bore scanners for larger or claustrophobic patients can carry different pricing at specialty centers.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Do I meet my insurer's criteria yet, or will this be denied for lack of conservative treatment first?
- 2.What is the cash or negotiated price at nearby freestanding imaging centers?
- 3.Is my scan authorized at the specific location I am booked at?
- 4.Given my history, does the radiologist need contrast, and what would that add?
- 5.If the MRI shows a disc problem, what are the typical next-step costs I should anticipate?
Other featured procedures in Colorado
MRI Lumbar Spine in other states
MRI Lumbar Spine in Colorado: questions
Colorado is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 72148 is $200.55 in an office and $200.55 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. $200.55 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $435 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $315 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 $191.72).