Shoulder X-Ray Cost in Rhode Island
X-ray exam of shoulder
$125Hospital 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
Rhode Island Medicare physician rate (2026)
+2.8% 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.
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 Rhode Island
Enter a ZIP code for your part of Rhode Island, whether Providence and Pawtucket, Warwick and Cranston, Newport, or the South County shore towns.
What shoulder x-ray costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island
Where Rhode Island ranks for this CPT
Shoulder X-Ray and how Rhode Island is priced
Rhode Island, the smallest state, is unsurprisingly a single payment locality, with geographic adjustments above the national average in line with southern New England's cost structure. Providence and the shoreline towns publish identical Medicare-approved amounts, and no point in the state is more than an hour from its main hospitals. The compact geography makes locality subdivision pointless. Pricing here reads as a slightly discounted echo of neighboring Boston's market.
Providence dominates Rhode Island care, with the state's teaching hospitals and academic affiliation concentrated there, and consolidation has left a small number of systems running most beds. Many Rhode Islanders, particularly in the northeast corner, use Boston hospitals for complex or specialized procedures, accepting metro Boston pricing when they do. South County residents have fewer local options and often travel to Providence.
This procedure: A shoulder X-ray takes two or more views of the shoulder joint in a few minutes, checking for fractures, dislocations, arthritis, or calcium deposits. It is usually the first imaging test for shoulder pain because it is fast and inexpensive, even though it cannot see the rotator cuff tendons themselves. You stand or sit while the technologist positions your arm for each view; no preparation is needed and the radiation dose is small.
What Is Shoulder X-Ray?
A shoulder X-ray takes two or more views of the shoulder joint in a few minutes, checking for fractures, dislocations, arthritis, or calcium deposits. It is usually the first imaging test for shoulder pain because it is fast and inexpensive, even though it cannot see the rotator cuff tendons themselves. You stand or sit while the technologist positions your arm for each view; no preparation is needed and the radiation dose is small.
What Affects the Cost
- –An orthopedic office with in-house X-ray often bills less overall than a hospital radiology department for the same views.
- –The radiologist or orthopedist reading fee may be billed separately from the technical charge.
- –Because X-rays cannot show tendons, a normal result often leads to a shoulder MRI, which costs many times more.
- –ER imaging for a suspected dislocation carries emergency facility pricing.
- –Comparison views of the other shoulder, when ordered, can add a second billed study.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Is the X-ray billed on top of today's visit charge, and at what price?
- 2.Who reads the images, and is their fee separate?
- 3.If the X-ray is normal, will you order an MRI, and what will that authorization and cost look like?
- 4.Do you need views of both shoulders for comparison, and does that double the imaging charge?
- 5.Can I get the images done here in your office rather than at the hospital?
Other featured procedures in Rhode Island
Shoulder X-Ray in other states
Shoulder X-Ray in Rhode Island: questions
Rhode Island is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 73030 is $36.74 in an office and $36.74 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. Rhode Island 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 $7 for the office physician line or $7 for the hospital physician line in Rhode Island. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $36.74 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $125 in a hospital outpatient department. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Rhode Island ranks #39 of 51 states on the physician line (3% above the national office rate of $35.74).