Office Visit (New, Moderate-High) Cost in South Carolina
Office o/p new mod 45 min
$169.89South Carolina physician fee2026 Medicare office rate- ✓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
South Carolina Medicare physician rate (2026)
-4.2% vs nationalSingle statewide locality.
Your ZIP in South Carolina
Check your ZIP code for your region of South Carolina, whether Charleston and the Lowcountry, Columbia and the Midlands, Greenville-Spartanburg in the Upstate, or Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand.
What office visit (new, moderate-high) costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in South Carolina 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. In South Carolina the office and hospital physician lines for this CPT differ by $55.86.
National vs South Carolina
Where South Carolina ranks for this CPT
Office Visit (New, Moderate-High) and how South Carolina is priced
South Carolina prices through one statewide locality with indices a bit below the national average, so Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and the rural Pee Dee share the same Medicare-approved amounts. Rapid coastal growth has not led CMS to break out a separate locality, keeping the fee schedule uniform from the mountains to the sea islands. The single set of adjustments makes the statewide figures here directly usable anywhere in the state. Facility fees at hospital-owned locations remain the largest source of price variation for patients.
The state's medical firepower splits three ways: an academic medical center and strong hospital market in Charleston, the capital-region systems in Columbia, and a large Upstate network centered on Greenville. Retiree-heavy coastal areas like Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach have booming demand for Medicare-age care, while the rural I-95 corridor faces some of the state's worst access gaps. Some border residents use Charlotte or Augusta providers.
This procedure: This is a new-patient office visit of moderate to high complexity: your first visit to a practice in three years for a problem with real depth, such as multiple symptoms needing workup, a new chronic disease like diabetes, or several interacting conditions. When billed by time it represents 45 to 59 minutes on the visit date. It is the most commonly billed new-patient level in the United States, the default for a substantive first specialist or primary care appointment.
What Is Office Visit (New, Moderate-High)?
This is a new-patient office visit of moderate to high complexity: your first visit to a practice in three years for a problem with real depth, such as multiple symptoms needing workup, a new chronic disease like diabetes, or several interacting conditions. When billed by time it represents 45 to 59 minutes on the visit date. It is the most commonly billed new-patient level in the United States, the default for a substantive first specialist or primary care appointment.
What Affects the Cost
- –As the workhorse new-patient code, it prices well above 99203, and the level is set by the visit's complexity, not by what you expected walking in.
- –Specialist consultations commonly bill at this level, and specialist charge rates exceed primary care for the same code.
- –Diagnostic workups launched at this visit, labs, imaging referrals, and tests, are where the episode's real spending usually begins.
- –Facility fees at hospital-owned clinics inflate this visit substantially compared with independent offices.
- –Prolonged-service add-on codes can stack on top if the visit runs well past an hour.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Does my plan require a referral for this specialist before the visit is covered?
- 2.What is the negotiated or cash price for a level-four new-patient visit here?
- 3.Which tests are you likely to order, and which of those need prior authorization?
- 4.Is there a facility fee because this clinic is hospital-owned?
- 5.If the visit runs long, could additional prolonged-service charges apply?
Other featured procedures in South Carolina
Office Visit (New, Moderate-High) in other states
Office Visit (New, Moderate-High) in South Carolina: questions
South Carolina is a single Medicare locality for this fee schedule. The 2026 physician rate for CPT 99204 is $169.89 in an office and $114.03 in a hospital, statewide. A ZIP lookup still confirms the locality mapping.
Not on the physician fee schedule. South Carolina 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 $34 for the office physician line or $23 for the hospital physician line in South Carolina. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $169.89 is the Medicare physician allowed amount for CPT 99204. Anesthesia, facility fees, implants, and other CPT codes billed the same day are extra. South Carolina ranks #14 of 51 states on this physician line (4% below the national office rate of $177.36).