Methodology & sources

The three price levels

A U.S. hospital reports several prices for the same procedure, and the whole point of this site is to make three of them legible:

Chargemaster (list) price — the hospital's full, undiscounted sticker rate. It is often several times the real price and almost no one actually pays it; insurers negotiate it down and self-pay patients are usually offered a cash price instead. We show it because the size of the discount off list is itself information.

Negotiated price — what health insurers actually pay. This is the most representative figure and appears on every page as a metro range. Because individual payer contracts vary a lot, we summarise them robustly (below) rather than quoting a single raw number.

Self-pay cash price — what an uninsured patient who pays the hospital directly is offered. Hospitals publish one only for some services — most often outpatient imaging and lab tests — so it appears where it genuinely exists and is omitted, not guessed, where it does not.

How the metro range and per-hospital figures are computed

Raw negotiated minimum/maximum charges are outlier-prone — a single unusual contract can read as a $250 or an $88,000 knee MRI. So the aggregation is deliberately robust, in two stages.

Per hospital. For one hospital and one procedure, the negotiated figure is the median of that hospital's line-item payer rates (each of which is itself a median across that item's payers). The cash figure is the median of the distinct cash prices the hospital reports, and the list price is the median of its chargemaster charges.

Per metro. Across the distinct hospitals in a metro, we report the minimum, 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, and maximum of those per-hospital negotiated figures — so the page shows both a typical price and an honest spread. A metro-and-procedure page is published only when at least three distinct hospitals report a negotiated price; the cash and list-price blocks appear on the same three-hospital threshold.

Self-pay cash — shown only where it is genuine

Some hospitals set their "discounted cash price" equal to the chargemaster — a sticker price relabelled, not a real self-pay discount. The site never treats that as a cash price: a hospital's cash figure is used only when it is a genuine discount below the list price. Where no area hospital publishes a real cash price for a procedure, the page says so plainly instead of showing a number.

Never fabricated — missing means missing

This is a Your-Money-or-Your-Life topic, so the hard rule is: no number is ever invented. When a hospital's file does not report a price for a billing code, the site shows a dash — never a modeled, averaged-in, or estimated figure. Files that are stale, malformed, or that do not report a matching code are skipped, not patched. A price you see traces to a specific hospital's specific published file.

Billing codes matter

Each procedure is matched to the specific CPT, HCPCS, or MS-DRG code(s) hospitals actually bill — and the codes are chosen carefully. For example, inpatient knee and hip replacements share the same MS-DRG pair (469/470), so a DRG-level price cannot distinguish them; a screening colonoscopy uses different codes than a diagnostic one; and a hospital facility bills the technical component of a stress test separately from the physician's read. Each procedure page lists the code it is priced on so the comparison is apples-to-apples.

Which procedures and metros are covered

The site prices 35 of the most-searched "shoppable" procedures — imaging, lab tests, screenings, common surgeries, cardiac and endoscopy procedures, and maternity — across major U.S. metros, using the largest quality hospitals in each. Coverage grows as more hospitals' files are parsed; every published page already meets the three-hospital threshold.

A price reference — not a bill, not advice

Every figure is a reference aggregated from public files. It is not a quote, a bill, an insurance benefit determination, or medical or financial advice. Your actual out-of-pocket cost depends on your insurance plan, the exact service performed, and the hospital. Always confirm price and coverage directly with the hospital and your insurer before care.

Update cadence

Hospitals republish their files roughly annually, and each file carries its own last-updated date, shown on the relevant pages. Between a hospital's updates its figures are immutable, so the site refreshes when a hospital publishes a newer file — not on a fixed clock.