CT Chest With Contrast Cost in Pennsylvania
Ct thorax dx c+
$346Hospital 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
Pennsylvania Medicare physician rate (2026)
-1.2% vs nationalAverage of 2 localities. Office range $156.18–$173.09.
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 $82 on the Medicare allowed amount for ct chest with 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 Pennsylvania
Look up your ZIP to see whether metro Philadelphia or rest-of-state pricing applies, from Philadelphia and its collar counties to Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, Scranton, Erie, and the rural center.
What ct chest with contrast costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania
Where Pennsylvania ranks for this CPT
CPT 71260 by Pennsylvania locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| metropolitan philadelphia | $173.09 |
| rest of pennsylvania | $156.18 |
PE GPCI ranges from 0.918 to 1.041 in Pennsylvania. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
CT Chest With Contrast and how Pennsylvania is priced
Pennsylvania's fee schedule separates metro Philadelphia from the rest of the state, giving the southeast its own higher-cost locality while Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, Erie, and rural Pennsylvania share rest-of-state adjustments. That means the state's second-largest medical market, Pittsburgh, is priced with rural counties rather than with Philadelphia. The Philadelphia locality's premium reflects the metro's wage and rent levels, which lead the state by a wide margin. For patients, the key locality question in Pennsylvania is simply whether care happens in the Philadelphia area.
Philadelphia is one of America's historic centers of academic medicine, dense with teaching hospitals, while Pittsburgh is dominated by a pair of large integrated systems whose rivalry has defined that market for years. The rural middle of the state, sometimes called the T, has far fewer options, and hospital closures there have drawn statewide attention. Residents near the edges use New York, Baltimore, or Ohio providers when convenient.
This procedure: A chest CT with contrast adds an IV injection of iodine dye during the scan to light up blood vessels, lymph nodes, and masses in the chest. It is preferred when evaluating enlarged lymph nodes, suspected cancer spread, or vascular structures. The scan itself takes under a minute; the appointment runs about 30 minutes including IV placement, and the dye causes a brief warm flush that patients often feel in odd places.
What Is CT Chest With Contrast?
A chest CT with contrast adds an IV injection of iodine dye during the scan to light up blood vessels, lymph nodes, and masses in the chest. It is preferred when evaluating enlarged lymph nodes, suspected cancer spread, or vascular structures. The scan itself takes under a minute; the appointment runs about 30 minutes including IV placement, and the dye causes a brief warm flush that patients often feel in odd places.
What Affects the Cost
- –The iodinated contrast is a separate supply charge on top of the scan fee.
- –A kidney function blood test may be required before contrast in older patients or those with kidney risk, adding a lab charge.
- –Hospital versus freestanding center pricing gaps for contrast CT are just as wide as for any advanced imaging.
- –Patients with prior contrast reactions may need pre-medication protocols or an alternative study, changing the cost picture.
- –The radiologist's fee for a contrast-enhanced study runs higher than for the plain version.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Does my authorization specify a contrast-enhanced chest CT?
- 2.Will I need a kidney function test first, and is that billed to me?
- 3.How much is the contrast agent itself on your bills?
- 4.What is the global price at a freestanding imaging center?
- 5.If I react to dye or my kidneys disqualify me, what happens to the study and the charges?
Other featured procedures in Pennsylvania
CT Chest With Contrast in other states
CT Chest With Contrast in Pennsylvania: questions
The 2026 Medicare physician office rate for CPT 71260 averages $164.64 across 2 Pennsylvania localities, from $156.18 in REST OF PENNSYLVANIA to $173.09 in METROPOLITAN PHILADELPHIA. The hospital physician rate averages $164.64. Enter a ZIP for the exact locality.
Yes. CMS splits Pennsylvania into 2 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $16.91 from the lowest to highest locality. Look up your ZIP to see whether metro Philadelphia or rest-of-state pricing applies, from Philadelphia and its collar counties to Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Allentown, Scranton, Erie, and the rural center.
After the Part B deductible, coinsurance is usually 20% of the allowed amount: about $33 for the office physician line or $33 for the hospital physician line in Pennsylvania. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $164.64 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $346 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $264 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Pennsylvania ranks #27 of 51 states on the physician line (within 2% of the national office rate of $166.67).