How Much Does Orthopedic Hardware Removal Cost in North Dakota?
Removal of implant deep
$3,362Hospital outpatient total2026 Medicare, physician + facilityUnder 2026 Medicare rates, orthopedic hardware removal costs up to about $3,362 in total at a hospital outpatient department or about $1,643 at an ambulatory surgery center, counting both the physician and the facility (national rates). The physician's own fee in North Dakota averages $373.
- ✓Your ZIP's wage-adjusted hospital and surgery center rates
- ✓Five nearby hospitals by name, with CMS star ratings
- ✓The add-on codes that typically land on the bill
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- ✓Everything in the Premium report
- ✓15 nearby hospitals instead of five
- ✓Filled good-faith-estimate request letter
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- ✓Printable PDF download
North Dakota Medicare physician rate (2026)
-3.3% 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 center over a hospital saves about $1,719 on the Medicare allowed amount for orthopedic hardware removal. Ask whether your procedure can be done at an ambulatory surgery center.
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 North Dakota
Enter a ZIP code for your part of North Dakota, whether Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks, Minot, or the farm and oil country in between.
What orthopedic hardware removal costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in North Dakota 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.
For example 58001.
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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 center 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 North Dakota the office and hospital physician lines for this CPT differ by $237.48.
National vs North Dakota
Where North Dakota ranks for this CPT
Orthopedic Hardware Removal and how North Dakota is priced
North Dakota's entire fee schedule flows through one statewide locality whose geographic indices sit near the national floor, lifted partly by the work index floor CMS applies to low-cost states. Fargo and a prairie town on the Canadian border publish identical Medicare-approved amounts. With no metro large enough to justify its own locality, the state is among the most straightforward in the country for Medicare pricing. Oil-patch growth in the west changed local economies but not the fee schedule structure.
Fargo and Bismarck are the state's two care anchors, each dominated by large regional systems that also reach into Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana, with Grand Forks and Minot serving their own areas. Much of rural North Dakota depends on critical access hospitals, and winter travel adds a genuine planning constraint. Some eastern residents cross into Minnesota for care, particularly toward Fargo-Moorhead's twin market.
This procedure: CPT 20680 is the removal of deep orthopedic hardware, such as a rod, plate, screws or pins that were placed to fix a broken bone. Hardware is taken out when it causes pain or irritation, becomes infected, or limits movement, and sometimes after a fracture has fully healed in younger patients. It is usually an outpatient operation under anesthesia, and the size of the job depends on the implant: removing a long rod from the thigh bone is a bigger operation than taking out a few screws from the ankle.
What Is Orthopedic Hardware Removal?
CPT 20680 is the removal of deep orthopedic hardware, such as a rod, plate, screws or pins that were placed to fix a broken bone. Hardware is taken out when it causes pain or irritation, becomes infected, or limits movement, and sometimes after a fracture has fully healed in younger patients. It is usually an outpatient operation under anesthesia, and the size of the job depends on the implant: removing a long rod from the thigh bone is a bigger operation than taking out a few screws from the ankle.
What Affects the Cost
- –The size and location of the implant drive operating time: removing an intramedullary rod from the femur takes longer than removing a small ankle plate.
- –Hardware removed through separate incisions can be billed more than once in the same operation.
- –Anesthesia is billed separately by the anesthesia provider.
- –Surgery centers typically have lower facility fees than hospital outpatient departments.
- –If infection is found, cultures, antibiotics and sometimes a hospital stay add to the total.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.What is causing my symptoms, and is removal likely to help?
- 2.Is all of the hardware coming out, and through how many incisions?
- 3.Will this be done at a surgery center or a hospital?
- 4.Will I need crutches, a brace or physical therapy afterward?
- 5.Is the anesthesia group in my network?
Other featured procedures in North Dakota
Orthopedic Hardware Removal in other states
Orthopedic Hardware Removal in North Dakota: questions
Under 2026 Medicare rates, orthopedic hardware removal costs up to about $3,362 in total at a hospital outpatient department or about $1,643 at an ambulatory surgery center, counting both the physician and the facility (national rates). The physician's own fee in North Dakota averages $373. North Dakota is a single Medicare locality, so the physician rate is the same statewide.
Not on the physician fee schedule. North Dakota 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 $122 for the office physician line or $75 for the hospital physician line in North Dakota. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $373.43 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to up to about $3,362 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $1,643 at an ambulatory surgery center. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. North Dakota ranks #24 of 51 states on the physician line (3% below the national office rate of $631.95).