Skin Biopsy (Tangential) Cost in Kentucky
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$445Hospital 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
Kentucky Medicare physician rate (2026)
-8.6% 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 $343 on the Medicare allowed amount for skin biopsy (tangential). 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 Kentucky
Use a ZIP lookup for your area of Kentucky, whether Louisville, Lexington, the northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati, Bowling Green, Owensboro, or the Appalachian east.
What skin biopsy (tangential) costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Kentucky 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 Kentucky the office and hospital physician lines for this CPT differ by $58.20.
National vs Kentucky
Where Kentucky ranks for this CPT
Skin Biopsy (Tangential) and how Kentucky is priced
Kentucky's fee schedule runs on one statewide locality, with geographic indices below the national average, so Louisville, Lexington, and the Appalachian east all publish the same Medicare-approved amounts. The uniform locality smooths over a state with sharp internal contrasts, from urban river cities to some of the most rural counties in America. Because the adjustments are identical everywhere, the statewide figures here transfer cleanly to any Kentucky address. Setting of care, office versus hospital outpatient, remains the biggest driver of what a patient actually pays.
Louisville and Lexington host the state's two academic medical centers and absorb referrals from a wide rural hinterland, while northern Kentucky functions as part of the Cincinnati market across the river. Eastern Kentucky's mountain counties face persistent physician shortages and long travel for specialty procedures. For residents along the borders, comparing against Cincinnati, Nashville, or Huntington providers is often worthwhile.
This procedure: A tangential skin biopsy removes a thin shaving from the surface of a suspicious spot using a flexible blade, without cutting deep into the skin. It is the go-to technique when a dermatologist wants to test a raised or scaly lesion for skin cancer or another skin condition. The area is numbed with a small injection, the shave itself takes seconds, and no stitches are needed; the site heals like a scrape over one to two weeks.
What Is Skin Biopsy (Tangential)?
A tangential skin biopsy removes a thin shaving from the surface of a suspicious spot using a flexible blade, without cutting deep into the skin. It is the go-to technique when a dermatologist wants to test a raised or scaly lesion for skin cancer or another skin condition. The area is numbed with a small injection, the shave itself takes seconds, and no stitches are needed; the site heals like a scrape over one to two weeks.
What Affects the Cost
- –The pathologist who examines the tissue under a microscope bills a separate professional fee, and that charge often exceeds the biopsy itself.
- –Each additional lesion shaved at the same visit is billed with an add-on code (11103), so multiple spots multiply the cost.
- –If the shave visit also includes a full skin exam, an office visit charge is typically billed alongside the biopsy.
- –Special pathology stains or a second dermatopathologist opinion on an ambiguous mole add further lab charges.
- –Hospital-owned dermatology clinics can add a facility fee that a private dermatology office would not charge.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Which pathology lab will read my biopsy, and is it in my insurance network?
- 2.Roughly what does the pathology reading cost in addition to the biopsy fee?
- 3.If you biopsy more than one spot today, how does that change my bill?
- 4.Will today's skin check be billed as a separate office visit on top of the biopsy?
- 5.Is this being coded as medically necessary rather than cosmetic?
Other featured procedures in Kentucky
Skin Biopsy (Tangential) in other states
Skin Biopsy (Tangential) in Kentucky: questions
Kentucky is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 11102 is $87.35 in an office and $29.15 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. Kentucky 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 $17 for the office physician line or $6 for the hospital physician line in Kentucky. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $87.35 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $445 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $103 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Kentucky ranks #5 of 51 states on the physician line (9% below the national office rate of $95.53).