How much does Medicare pay for CPT 29881?

Medicare allowed an average of $1040.58 per service and paid $824.56 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $6766.09, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 29881?

Removal of knee cartilage using an endoscope. It was billed 20,297 times to 20,065 Medicare beneficiaries by 1,040 providers in 2024.

Does 29881 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $511.71 in an office setting and $1044.04 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 29881 most?

Ambulatory Surgical Center, with 12,217 services from 537 clinicians. Next are Orthopedic Surgery, Sports Medicine, Physician Assistant.

CPT 29881

Removal of knee cartilage using an endoscope

$1040.58Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 20,297 services

Providers submitted

$6766.09

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$1040.58

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$824.56

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $6766.09 for this code and Medicare allowed $1040.58 — 6.5× 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 $824.56 (79%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $511.71
Hospital / facility: $1044.04

The facility rate is higher for this code, which is unusual and generally means the service depends on equipment or staffing a hospital carries. 132 services were billed in an office setting and 20,165 in a facility.

Services: 20,297
Beneficiaries: 20,065
Providers billing it: 1,040
Total allowed: $21,120,652

What Medicare pays for CPT 29881

Across 20,297 services billed by 1,040 providers to 20,065 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $1040.58 per service. 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 29881

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Ambulatory Surgical Center	12,217	12,080	$1444.00	537
Orthopedic Surgery	7,017	6,938	$454.10	438
Sports Medicine	526	517	$478.77	35
Physician Assistant	496	490	$65.15	27
Nurse Practitioner	27	26	$47.53	2
Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine	14	14	$536.67	1

29881 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
California	2,240	$1143.50	$735.17	109
Florida	2,116	$971.33	$809.61	102
Ohio	848	$977.68	$831.71	44
Texas	847	$931.68	$760.78	54
Tennessee	812	$1021.48	$927.46	35
Virginia	653	$1032.86	$855.96	34
New York	649	$1252.70	$927.68	34
Georgia	640	$1119.12	$933.51	34
Illinois	638	$1129.17	$895.33	35
Pennsylvania	638	$1086.30	$881.39	32
Arizona	634	$1039.16	$838.53	31
North Carolina	594	$1110.62	$934.75	30
Maryland	586	$1074.31	$859.58	32
Mississippi	553	$940.58	$861.99	22
Arkansas	490	$816.21	$722.60	22
Indiana	487	$957.62	$795.80	26
South Carolina	477	$906.25	$784.03	24
Massachusetts	424	$960.47	$742.95	18
Alabama	419	$870.87	$819.43	22
Colorado	393	$1076.39	$857.12	19
Kansas	380	$738.59	$629.79	19
Washington	371	$1274.32	$1002.18	17
Nevada	337	$880.01	$680.91	17
Michigan	332	$1166.51	$1000.14	18
Missouri	317	$1064.30	$904.57	16
Iowa	297	$1017.17	$870.76	18
New Jersey	280	$1283.87	$966.49	16
Connecticut	257	$1379.36	$1045.63	14
Montana	248	$976.33	$823.73	13
Oklahoma	221	$590.07	$496.17	12
Utah	218	$1169.49	$978.26	11
New Hampshire	194	$1032.51	$818.62	12
Louisiana	187	$1022.90	$907.91	10
Minnesota	174	$1424.69	$1113.20	10
Oregon	167	$1231.47	$928.49	9
Wisconsin	164	$1127.63	$929.13	9
Nebraska	149	$856.53	$710.64	11
Kentucky	143	$806.77	$675.33	8
New Mexico	113	$1060.59	$946.42	5
Wyoming	112	$1090.01	$894.19	8
South Dakota	107	$703.79	$598.88	6
Delaware	83	$1341.64	$1069.14	4
North Dakota	78	$908.18	$760.89	5
Rhode Island	62	$1435.39	$1152.27	2
West Virginia	42	$1087.72	$907.21	3
Alaska	40	$1613.40	$1185.63	2
Idaho	33	$1381.92	$1154.63	2
Maine	29	$924.38	$747.20	2
Puerto Rico	24	$614.57	$666.06	2

Related codes

29827Repair of shoulder rotator cuff$1315.10
29848Release of wrist ligament$567.21
29826Shaving of part of shoulder bone and repair of ligament$117.20
29823Removal of extensive shoulder joint tissue$290.14
29824Partial removal of collar bone at shoulder$399.85
29828Release of tendon connecting biceps muscle and shoulder$1244.67
29880Removal of both knee cartilages$1020.13
29879Repair of knee joint$618.02
29876Removal of joint lining from multiple knee joint compartments$605.32
29822Limited removal of abnormal shoulder joint tissue$411.36

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.