Medical Procedure Costs in North Carolina
North Carolina Medicare physician rates are generally below the national average (-5.4%). One statewide locality — the ZIP tool still maps you onto that locality.
Look up any CPT in North Carolina
Featured table below is 59 procedures. Search covers 7,500+ fee-schedule codes.
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. These North Carolina averages are unweighted means of the state’s localities, not population-weighted.
How Medicare prices North Carolina
North Carolina's Medicare physician pricing comes from one statewide locality with indices just under the national average, so Charlotte, the Research Triangle, and the rural east and mountain west all share the same approved amounts. For a state with several fast-growing metros, the single-locality approach keeps the fee schedule simple even as local economies diverge. Nothing in the geographic adjustments distinguishes a Raleigh procedure from one in Boone or Greenville. As elsewhere, the office-versus-hospital setting decision moves prices more than geography within the state does.
North Carolina is unusually rich in academic medicine, with multiple nationally known university medical centers clustered in the Triangle and Winston-Salem, plus a major hospital system anchored in Charlotte that has grown across the Southeast. The rural east and the mountain counties are much thinner markets, and hospital consolidation has been reshaping who owns local care. Patients near the borders sometimes use Virginia or South Carolina providers.
Check your ZIP code for your region of North Carolina, whether Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham and the Triangle, the Triad, Asheville and the mountains, or Wilmington and the coastal east.
Featured physician rates in North Carolina
Office (non-facility) physician rates. Open a row for the locality table and ZIP tool.
Other states
Medical costs in North Carolina: questions
Across the 59 featured procedures on this page, North Carolina sits below the national average by about 5%. Examples: incision & drainage of abscess $121, skin biopsy (tangential) $90, skin biopsy (punch) $114. Search any other CPT in the box above — those codes are in the tool, not as extra North Carolina articles.
North Carolina is one Medicare locality, so the physician fee schedule is statewide. Site of service (office vs hospital) and hospital facility fees still change what a patient is billed.
Medicare physician allowed amounts only — the professional fee after GPCI. They do not include hospital facility charges, anesthesia, or your plan’s contracted rate. Medicare patients typically owe 20% of the allowed amount after the Part B deductible, before Medigap.
Yes. The table is the featured set (59 procedures). The search box looks up 7,500+ payable codes from the 2026 fee schedule and applies North Carolina’s locality when you enter a ZIP.