MRI Brain Cost in Massachusetts
Mri brain stem w/o & w/dye
$673Hospital 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
Massachusetts Medicare physician rate (2026)
+9.6% vs nationalAverage of 2 localities. Office range $329.65–$365.45.
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 $164 on the Medicare allowed amount for mri brain. 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 Massachusetts
Look up your ZIP to see whether metro Boston or rest-of-state pricing applies, from Boston and Cambridge to Worcester, Springfield, the North and South Shores, and Cape Cod.
What mri brain costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts
Where Massachusetts ranks for this CPT
CPT 70553 by Massachusetts locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| metropolitan boston | $365.45 |
| rest of massachusetts | $329.65 |
PE GPCI ranges from 1.053 to 1.194 in Massachusetts. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
MRI Brain and how Massachusetts is priced
Massachusetts is priced through two localities: metro Boston and the rest of the state. Boston's locality carries clearly higher geographic adjustments, reflecting some of the highest medical wages and office costs in the nation, while Worcester, Springfield, and the Cape share the lower rest-of-state factors. The split means the fee schedule itself acknowledges what everyone in the state already knows about Boston prices. Even so, rest-of-state Massachusetts still prices above most of the country.
Boston has arguably the densest concentration of academic medical centers anywhere, and its teaching hospitals pull referrals from all of New England and beyond. That prestige comes with a high-cost market structure that state policymakers have scrutinized for years. Western Massachusetts operates more like a regional market centered on Springfield, and Cape and islands residents contend with seasonal capacity strain.
This procedure: This is the most complete brain MRI protocol: the scanner first takes a full set of images without dye, then repeats key sequences after an IV gadolinium injection, letting the radiologist compare the two. It is the standard workup for suspected brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, pituitary problems, and infection. Plan for 45 to 60 minutes in the scanner with an IV in your arm, making it the longest and most expensive of the three brain MRI codes.
What Is MRI Brain?
This is the most complete brain MRI protocol: the scanner first takes a full set of images without dye, then repeats key sequences after an IV gadolinium injection, letting the radiologist compare the two. It is the standard workup for suspected brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, pituitary problems, and infection. Plan for 45 to 60 minutes in the scanner with an IV in your arm, making it the longest and most expensive of the three brain MRI codes.
What Affects the Cost
- –As the combined protocol, 70553 carries the highest base price of the brain MRI family, before facility markup differences.
- –Hospital imaging departments charge far more than independent centers for this long scan.
- –The gadolinium dose is a separate supply charge on top of the imaging codes.
- –Longer scanner time means claustrophobia or movement problems are more likely to require sedation or a rescan, each adding cost.
- –Follow-up MRIs to track a finding over time repeat the full cost at each interval, so the surveillance schedule matters as much as the single-scan price.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Was the full without-and-with-contrast protocol authorized, or only a plain MRI?
- 2.What is your global price for this study at a freestanding center?
- 3.How many follow-up scans is my condition likely to need, and at what interval?
- 4.Are the contrast agent and radiologist reading included in the quoted price?
- 5.If my insurer pushes back, will my doctor do a peer-to-peer review to defend this protocol?
Other featured procedures in Massachusetts
MRI Brain in other states
MRI Brain in Massachusetts: questions
The 2026 Medicare physician office rate for CPT 70553 averages $347.55 across 2 Massachusetts localities, from $329.65 in REST OF MASSACHUSETTS to $365.45 in METROPOLITAN BOSTON. The hospital physician rate averages $347.55. Enter a ZIP for the exact locality.
Yes. CMS splits Massachusetts into 2 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $35.80 from the lowest to highest locality. Look up your ZIP to see whether metro Boston or rest-of-state pricing applies, from Boston and Cambridge to Worcester, Springfield, the North and South Shores, and Cape Cod.
After the Part B deductible, coinsurance is usually 20% of the allowed amount: about $70 for the office physician line or $70 for the hospital physician line in Massachusetts. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $347.55 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $673 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $510 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Massachusetts ranks #45 of 51 states on the physician line (10% above the national office rate of $316.97).