MRI Brain Without Contrast Cost in Maryland
Mri brain stem w/o dye
$439Hospital 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
Maryland Medicare physician rate (2026)
+3.6% vs nationalAverage of 2 localities. Office range $197.33–$207.47.
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 $116 on the Medicare allowed amount for mri brain without contrast. 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 Maryland
A ZIP lookup matters in Maryland because three different locality treatments are in play: check whether you fall in the Baltimore area, the DC suburbs like Bethesda and Silver Spring, or rest-of-state regions like Frederick, Hagerstown, and the Eastern Shore.
What mri brain without contrast costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Maryland 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 Maryland
Where Maryland ranks for this CPT
CPT 70551 by Maryland locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| baltimore/surr. cntys | $207.47 |
| rest of maryland | $197.33 |
PE GPCI ranges from 1.012 to 1.073 in Maryland. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
MRI Brain Without Contrast and how Maryland is priced
Maryland's Medicare physician pricing is split geographically: Baltimore and its surrounding counties form one locality, the rest of the state another, and, unusually, the Washington suburbs including Montgomery and Prince George's counties are priced inside the District of Columbia's high-cost locality rather than either Maryland one. That three-way carve means a Rockville procedure is approved at DC-area rates while an identical one in Frederick or Salisbury is not. Baltimore-area adjustments sit above rest-of-state levels but below the DC locality. Few states have their pricing shaped this much by a neighboring jurisdiction.
Maryland is also the only state with an all-payer rate-setting system for hospital services, so hospital-side billing works differently here than anywhere else in the country, though physician fees still follow the standard Medicare schedule. Baltimore's academic medical centers rank among the most prominent in the world and draw patients globally. The Eastern Shore and western Maryland are far more rural, with patients often traveling to Baltimore, Annapolis, or across state lines.
This procedure: A brain MRI without contrast uses a powerful magnet and radio waves, no radiation, to produce detailed pictures of the brain. It is ordered for headaches with warning signs, dizziness, memory concerns, seizure evaluation, or suspected multiple sclerosis. You lie still inside the scanner tube for 20 to 40 minutes while it makes loud knocking sounds; earplugs are provided, and no needles are involved for this non-contrast version.
What Is MRI Brain Without Contrast?
A brain MRI without contrast uses a powerful magnet and radio waves, no radiation, to produce detailed pictures of the brain. It is ordered for headaches with warning signs, dizziness, memory concerns, seizure evaluation, or suspected multiple sclerosis. You lie still inside the scanner tube for 20 to 40 minutes while it makes loud knocking sounds; earplugs are provided, and no needles are involved for this non-contrast version.
What Affects the Cost
- –Hospital-based MRI departments often charge several times what freestanding imaging centers charge for the identical scan.
- –The radiologist's interpretation fee is separate from the scan fee, and the two may come from different billers.
- –If the radiologist protocol adds contrast after reviewing initial images, the study converts to a costlier code and adds injection charges.
- –Claustrophobic patients who need sedation or an open-bore magnet add medication, monitoring, or specialty-equipment costs.
- –After-hours or stat interpretation requests can carry premium charges at some facilities.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Has prior authorization been approved, and for which specific facility?
- 2.What is the price at a freestanding imaging center versus the hospital for this exact scan?
- 3.Is the radiologist's reading fee included in the quote or billed separately?
- 4.Could the protocol change to include contrast, and what would that cost?
- 5.If I am claustrophobic, what would sedation or an open MRI add?
Other featured procedures in Maryland
MRI Brain Without Contrast in other states
MRI Brain Without Contrast in Maryland: questions
The 2026 Medicare physician office rate for CPT 70551 averages $202.40 across 2 Maryland localities, from $197.33 in REST OF MARYLAND to $207.47 in BALTIMORE/SURR. CNTYS. The hospital physician rate averages $202.40. Enter a ZIP for the exact locality.
Yes. CMS splits Maryland into 2 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $10.14 from the lowest to highest locality. A ZIP lookup matters in Maryland because three different locality treatments are in play: check whether you fall in the Baltimore area, the DC suburbs like Bethesda and Silver Spring, or rest-of-state regions like Frederick, Hagerstown, and the Eastern Shore.
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 Maryland. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $202.40 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $439 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $323 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Maryland ranks #41 of 51 states on the physician line (4% above the national office rate of $195.40).