Colonoscopy (Diagnostic) Cost in District of Columbia
Diagnostic colonoscopy
$1,115Hospital 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
District of Columbia Medicare physician rate (2026)
+14.1% 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 $440 on the Medicare allowed amount for colonoscopy (diagnostic). Ask whether your procedure can be done at an ambulatory surgery centre.
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 District of Columbia
Enter a ZIP code to see how the DC locality applies to your address, whether you are in the District itself, Bethesda or Silver Spring on the Maryland side, or Arlington and Alexandria in Virginia.
What colonoscopy (diagnostic) costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in District of Columbia 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. In District of Columbia the office and hospital physician lines for this CPT differ by $251.42.
National vs District of Columbia
Where District of Columbia ranks for this CPT
Colonoscopy (Diagnostic) and how District of Columbia is priced
The District of Columbia is unusual in the fee schedule: it forms its own high-cost locality that reaches beyond the city line to cover close-in Maryland and Virginia suburbs, including areas such as Montgomery and Prince George's counties and the Arlington and Alexandria side of the Potomac. Its geographic indices are among the highest in the country, reflecting the region's wages and office costs. As a result, DC-area Medicare-approved amounts run well above those in the rest of Maryland or Virginia, and the boundary of that locality can matter more than the state line. A patient in Bethesda is priced with Washington, not with Baltimore.
The Washington area is dense with hospitals, including multiple academic medical centers and large regional systems competing across the district and its suburbs. That density gives patients real choice within a short distance, which is rare in American health care. Federal employment also means an unusually well-insured population, so cash-pay and Medicare-rate comparisons are most useful for those outside employer coverage.
This procedure: A diagnostic colonoscopy examines the entire large intestine with a flexible camera inserted through the rectum, looking for the cause of symptoms such as bleeding, chronic diarrhea, or abdominal pain, or following up an abnormal stool test. You complete a bowel-cleansing prep the day before, receive IV sedation, and the exam takes 20 to 45 minutes. This specific code means the doctor looked but did not remove or sample anything; you go home the same day with a driver.
What Is Colonoscopy (Diagnostic)?
A diagnostic colonoscopy examines the entire large intestine with a flexible camera inserted through the rectum, looking for the cause of symptoms such as bleeding, chronic diarrhea, or abdominal pain, or following up an abnormal stool test. You complete a bowel-cleansing prep the day before, receive IV sedation, and the exam takes 20 to 45 minutes. This specific code means the doctor looked but did not remove or sample anything; you go home the same day with a driver.
What Affects the Cost
- –Facility setting is the dominant variable: hospital outpatient departments routinely charge several times what freestanding endoscopy centers do.
- –Anesthesia billed separately, particularly monitored propofol sedation, adds a meaningful independent charge.
- –If any polyp or tissue is encountered and removed, the procedure converts to a higher-paying code (45380 or 45385) plus pathology fees.
- –The bowel prep kit may be a pharmacy cost, with prescription-only preps costing more than over-the-counter regimens.
- –A pre-procedure consult with the gastroenterologist is often billed as its own office visit.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Is my procedure being ordered as diagnostic or screening, and what exactly will I owe under each?
- 2.If this follows a positive Cologuard or FIT test, will it be billed with the screening modifier so my cost sharing is waived?
- 3.What are the facility fees at the hospital versus the endoscopy center you use?
- 4.Who provides sedation and are they in network?
- 5.If you find and remove a polyp, what does my estimate become?
Other featured procedures in District of Columbia
Colonoscopy (Diagnostic) in other states
Colonoscopy (Diagnostic) in District of Columbia: questions
District of Columbia is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 45378 is $431.34 in an office and $179.92 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. District of Columbia 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 $86 for the office physician line or $36 for the hospital physician line in District of Columbia. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $431.34 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $1,115 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $675 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. District of Columbia ranks #50 of 51 states on the physician line (14% above the national office rate of $378.10).