MRI Knee Cost in Texas
Mri jnt of lwr extre w/o dye
$448Hospital 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
Texas Medicare physician rate (2026)
-1.2% vs nationalAverage of 8 localities. Office range $190.04–$213.28.
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 $112 on the Medicare allowed amount for mri knee. 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 Texas
With so many Texas localities, check your exact ZIP: Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, the Galveston and Beaumont coast, San Antonio, El Paso, the Valley, and rural West Texas can all price differently.
What mri knee costs at hospitals near you
Everything above is a national average. The hospital you pick in Texas 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 Texas
Where Texas ranks for this CPT
CPT 73721 by Texas locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| austin | $213.28 |
| houston | $204.80 |
| dallas | $203.75 |
| galveston | $203.15 |
| brazoria | $202.69 |
| fort worth | $202.22 |
| rest of texas | $196.10 |
| beaumont | $190.04 |
PE GPCI ranges from 0.910 to 1.058 in Texas. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
MRI Knee and how Texas is priced
Texas is carved into grouped metro localities rather than priced statewide: Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Galveston, Beaumont, and Brazoria each carry their own locality, and the enormous remainder of the state shares rest-of-state pricing. The big-city localities approve higher amounts than rural Texas, with Houston and Dallas at the top of the state's range. Uniquely, several smaller Gulf Coast areas kept their own localities from an earlier era, which is why Galveston and Beaumont are priced separately from Houston. San Antonio and El Paso, despite their size, fall under rest-of-state factors.
Texas contains several of the largest medical complexes in the world, most famously in Houston, plus deep hospital markets in Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin. At the other extreme, West Texas and the Panhandle include counties with no physician at all, and rural hospital closures have hit Texas harder than almost any state. Border communities from El Paso to the Rio Grande Valley have distinct markets, and some residents cross into Mexico for lower-cost dental and pharmacy care.
This procedure: A knee MRI without contrast (the lower extremity joint MRI code) shows the menisci, ligaments including the ACL, cartilage, and bone marrow, none of which appear on X-ray. It is the definitive test for suspected meniscus tears and ligament injuries. You lie on your back with the knee in a small coil for 20 to 40 minutes of painless but noisy scanning, and results typically reach your doctor within a couple of days.
What Is MRI Knee?
A knee MRI without contrast (the lower extremity joint MRI code) shows the menisci, ligaments including the ACL, cartilage, and bone marrow, none of which appear on X-ray. It is the definitive test for suspected meniscus tears and ligament injuries. You lie on your back with the knee in a small coil for 20 to 40 minutes of painless but noisy scanning, and results typically reach your doctor within a couple of days.
What Affects the Cost
- –The hospital versus freestanding center price gap for knee MRI is large and well documented; this is a scan worth shopping.
- –Insurer authorization rules often require an X-ray and a trial of conservative care first, adding upstream visits.
- –A confirmed meniscus or ligament tear frequently leads to arthroscopy, so the MRI often begins a bigger spending episode.
- –In patients over about 50, MRI often shows incidental degenerative findings that can prompt further, sometimes unnecessary, care.
- –The radiologist's interpretation fee is a distinct component of the price.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Has my insurer approved this scan, and does my chart show the X-ray and conservative care they require?
- 2.What is the all-in price at the freestanding centers near me?
- 3.Given my age, could therapy first make this MRI unnecessary?
- 4.Is the authorization tied to a specific facility?
- 5.If the MRI shows a tear, what are the typical next steps and their costs?
Other featured procedures in Texas
MRI Knee in other states
MRI Knee in Texas: questions
The 2026 Medicare physician office rate for CPT 73721 averages $202.00 across 8 Texas localities, from $190.04 in BEAUMONT to $213.28 in AUSTIN. The hospital physician rate averages $202.00. Enter a ZIP for the exact locality.
Yes. CMS splits Texas into 8 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $23.24 from the lowest to highest locality. With so many Texas localities, check your exact ZIP: Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, the Galveston and Beaumont coast, San Antonio, El Paso, the Valley, and rural West Texas can all price differently.
After the Part B deductible, coinsurance is usually 20% of the allowed amount: about $40 for the office physician line or $40 for the hospital physician line in Texas. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $202.00 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $448 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $336 at an ambulatory surgery centre. Anesthesia, pathology and other codes billed the same day are extra. Texas ranks #29 of 51 states on the physician line (within 2% of the national office rate of $204.41).