Nuclear Stress Test Cost in Texas
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$1,751Hospital 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)
-1.3% vs nationalAverage of 8 localities. Office range $394.19–$448.98.
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 $603 on the Medicare allowed amount for nuclear stress test. Ask whether your procedure can be done at an ambulatory surgery centre.
This is Medicare's separate payment to the facility on top of the physician's fee. 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 nuclear stress test 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 78452 by Texas locality
| Locality | Office |
|---|---|
| austin | $448.98 |
| houston | $427.33 |
| dallas | $426.24 |
| galveston | $424.95 |
| brazoria | $424.00 |
| fort worth | $422.59 |
| rest of texas | $408.54 |
| beaumont | $394.19 |
PE GPCI ranges from 0.910 to 1.058 in Texas. That index is why the same CPT is not one price statewide.
Nuclear Stress Test 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 nuclear stress test (SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging) shows how well blood reaches your heart muscle at rest versus under stress, revealing blocked arteries. A small amount of radioactive tracer is injected, a special camera images the heart at rest, then you exercise on a treadmill or receive a medication that mimics exercise, and imaging repeats. Plan for a half day; the multiple imaging sessions and waiting periods make it one of the longest routine cardiac tests.
What Is Nuclear Stress Test?
A nuclear stress test (SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging) shows how well blood reaches your heart muscle at rest versus under stress, revealing blocked arteries. A small amount of radioactive tracer is injected, a special camera images the heart at rest, then you exercise on a treadmill or receive a medication that mimics exercise, and imaging repeats. Plan for a half day; the multiple imaging sessions and waiting periods make it one of the longest routine cardiac tests.
What Affects the Cost
- –The radioactive tracer is a significant supply cost billed alongside the imaging, and tracer prices fluctuate with supply shortages.
- –Pharmacologic stress agents, used for patients who cannot exercise, are expensive drugs billed as additional lines.
- –Hospital outpatient cardiology departments charge substantially more than office-based nuclear labs.
- –Abnormal results commonly lead to cardiac catheterization, a much larger downstream expense.
- –The supervising cardiologist's stress supervision fee and the imaging interpretation fee are separate professional charges.
Questions to Ask Before Booking
- 1.Has prior authorization been approved, and did my insurer suggest a cheaper test first?
- 2.Would a stress echocardiogram or exercise ECG answer the question for me at lower cost?
- 3.What do the tracer and any stress medication add to the bill?
- 4.Is this being done in an office-based lab or a hospital department, and what is the price at each?
- 5.If the result is abnormal, what is the next test and its typical cost?
Other featured procedures in Texas
Nuclear Stress Test in other states
Nuclear Stress Test in Texas: questions
The 2026 Medicare physician office rate for CPT 78452 averages $422.10 across 8 Texas localities, from $394.19 in BEAUMONT to $448.98 in AUSTIN. The hospital physician rate averages $422.10. Enter a ZIP for the exact locality.
Yes. CMS splits Texas into 8 payment localities. For this CPT the office physician fee spans $54.79 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 $84 for the office physician line or $84 for the hospital physician line in Texas. Medigap may cover that 20%. This is not the hospital facility fee.
No. $422.10 is only the physician's share. Adding Medicare's facility payment brings the total to about $1,751 in a hospital outpatient department, or about $1,147 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 $427.87).