How much does Medicare pay for CPT 20600?

Medicare allowed an average of $47.60 per service and paid $35.16 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $203.29, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 20600?

Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from small joint. It was billed 314,381 times to 202,893 Medicare beneficiaries by 6,677 providers in 2024.

Does 20600 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $48.71 in an office setting and $27.43 in a facility. The office rate is generally higher because the practice supplies the room, staff and equipment out of that single payment; in a hospital those are billed separately by the facility.

Which specialty bills 20600 most?

Orthopedic Surgery, with 84,110 services from 1,718 clinicians. Next are Podiatry, Hand Surgery, Physician Assistant.

CPT 20600

Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from small joint

$47.60Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 314,381 services

Providers submitted

$203.29

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$47.60

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$35.16

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $203.29 for this code and Medicare allowed $47.60 — 4.3× less. That gap is normal and means nothing on its own: Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of what is billed, so the submitted figure describes a hospital chargemaster, not a price anyone paid. Of the allowed amount Medicare paid $35.16 (74%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $48.71
Hospital / facility: $27.43

The office rate is higher because the practice supplies the room, staff and equipment out of that payment. In a hospital the facility bills those separately, so the clinician's share is smaller — the total cost to Medicare is usually higher, not lower. 297,895 services were billed in an office setting and 16,486 in a facility.

Services: 314,381
Beneficiaries: 202,893
Providers billing it: 6,677
Total allowed: $14,964,536

What Medicare pays for CPT 20600

Across 314,381 services billed by 6,677 providers to 202,893 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $47.60 per service. That is 1.5 services per beneficiary, so this is a code patients typically receive more than once. The allowed amount is the figure that matters: it is what Medicare and the patient together owe, set by the fee schedule and adjusted for local practice costs. What a provider chose to submit has no bearing on it.

Who bills 20600

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Orthopedic Surgery	84,110	55,704	$48.31	1,718
Podiatry	83,506	52,205	$49.96	2,067
Hand Surgery	74,137	49,868	$49.41	1,058
Physician Assistant	29,060	18,980	$40.57	711
Rheumatology	16,316	10,034	$48.56	443
Nurse Practitioner	7,294	4,698	$39.87	184
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery	6,430	3,836	$46.32	119
Ambulatory Surgical Center	2,883	1,424	$15.56	77
Internal Medicine	2,421	1,208	$43.98	49
Diagnostic Radiology	2,219	1,342	$36.48	72
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation	1,249	502	$38.54	27
Family Practice	1,159	818	$48.71	45
General Surgery	1,125	739	$48.01	21
Sports Medicine	1,094	765	$46.43	38
Pain Management	394	221	$45.46	16

20600 reimbursement by state

Two different numbers. Allowed is what Medicare actually allowed in that state, which includes the local practice-cost adjustment. Standardized strips that geographic adjustment out of the payment, so it is the column to use when comparing states — a difference there reflects how the code was billed, not what it costs to run a practice locally.

State	Services	Allowed	Standardized pmt	Providers
Florida	36,970	$46.85	$33.71	593
California	25,469	$49.79	$32.65	520
New York	21,750	$55.73	$37.46	409
Texas	18,672	$47.67	$35.50	385
Pennsylvania	15,525	$49.26	$36.34	343
Arizona	11,528	$45.39	$32.87	203
North Carolina	10,716	$44.49	$33.49	272
Illinois	10,524	$49.32	$34.86	250
Ohio	10,497	$42.16	$31.29	232
Georgia	9,947	$45.29	$33.63	217
New Jersey	9,821	$57.01	$38.68	241
Virginia	9,484	$44.82	$32.79	207
Michigan	9,276	$46.13	$33.29	201
South Carolina	9,127	$46.20	$35.45	155
Massachusetts	8,855	$50.33	$34.89	203
Missouri	6,927	$42.23	$31.89	119
Tennessee	6,602	$43.49	$34.50	140
Kentucky	5,910	$44.04	$34.63	93
Maryland	5,565	$53.71	$37.14	148
Colorado	5,548	$50.35	$35.97	136
Washington	5,254	$48.24	$32.33	127
Indiana	4,668	$46.54	$36.14	123
Iowa	3,918	$45.78	$35.19	82
Kansas	3,646	$41.89	$32.22	67
Arkansas	3,408	$46.17	$37.01	77
Louisiana	3,215	$44.79	$35.75	84
Minnesota	3,202	$44.15	$32.83	96
Connecticut	2,863	$52.93	$36.52	75
Oregon	2,788	$47.28	$34.36	64
Oklahoma	2,702	$47.09	$36.63	75
Mississippi	2,673	$42.09	$34.38	54
Nevada	2,540	$48.57	$35.80	58
Nebraska	2,455	$39.15	$29.84	54
Alabama	2,431	$46.99	$38.03	68
Wisconsin	2,430	$44.69	$34.19	83
Delaware	2,413	$49.45	$36.34	40
Utah	2,244	$44.01	$31.83	60
New Hampshire	1,719	$48.84	$35.16	46
New Mexico	1,585	$42.27	$30.06	28
North Dakota	1,422	$35.46	$25.77	34
Montana	1,377	$46.37	$31.92	33
West Virginia	1,207	$44.66	$33.24	25
South Dakota	1,171	$39.12	$28.98	32
Idaho	958	$39.63	$30.92	29
Rhode Island	707	$46.68	$34.22	19
Wyoming	539	$45.99	$32.90	15
Maine	531	$40.86	$28.09	15
Hawaii	464	$42.41	$29.14	10
Vermont	385	$37.83	$27.56	11
Alaska	338	$56.37	$33.47	13
District of Columbia	296	$50.99	$34.77	9
Guam	58	$56.33	$39.30	1
Puerto Rico	49	$45.94	$30.98	2
AE	12	$61.02	$45.80	1

Related codes

20610Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from large joint$65.03
20611Aspiration and/or injection of fluid large joint$101.93
20605Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from medium joint$50.73
20604Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from small joint$75.96
20606Aspiration and/or injection of fluid from medium joint$85.99
20680Removal of deep implant from bone$686.12
20612Aspiration and/or injection of cyst of tendon$59.89

Billing this code is not the same as earning it

An allowed amount is revenue to a practice, not income to a clinician. It funds staff, premises, equipment and supplies before anyone is paid. What clinicians actually earn is published separately by the Department of Labor, and what industry pays them is published separately again by CMS — this site carries both.

What doctors are paid →·Look up a clinician →·All procedure codes →

Where this comes from. CMS Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners, by Provider and Service, 2024. It covers fee-for-service Original Medicare Part B only — not Medicare Advantage, not Medicaid, and not commercial insurance, which typically pays more for the same code.

How it is averaged. CMS publishes one average per provider per code. Every figure here is re-weighted by the number of services, so a clinician who billed the code 4,000 times counts 4,000 times more than one who billed it twice. CMS also suppresses any provider-code pair with fewer than 11 beneficiaries, so low-volume practice is missing from these totals by design.