How much does Medicare pay for CPT 83550?

Medicare allowed an average of $8.55 per service and paid $8.55 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $45.49, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 83550?

Iron binding capacity. It was billed 2,879,215 times to 1,927,422 Medicare beneficiaries by 6,736 providers in 2024.

Does 83550 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $8.55 in an office setting and $8.57 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 83550 most?

Clinical Laboratory, with 2,112,483 services from 519 clinicians. Next are Hematology-Oncology, Internal Medicine, Pathology.

CPT 83550

Iron binding capacity

$8.55Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 2,879,215 services

Providers submitted

$45.49

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$8.55

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$8.55

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $45.49 for this code and Medicare allowed $8.55 — 5.3× 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 $8.55 (100%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $8.55
Hospital / facility: $8.57

The facility rate is higher for this code, which is unusual and generally means the service depends on equipment or staffing a hospital carries. 2,878,933 services were billed in an office setting and 282 in a facility.

Services: 2,879,215
Beneficiaries: 1,927,422
Providers billing it: 6,736
Total allowed: $24,617,288

What Medicare pays for CPT 83550

Across 2,879,215 services billed by 6,736 providers to 1,927,422 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $8.55 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 83550

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Clinical Laboratory	2,112,483	1,460,978	$8.56	519
Hematology-Oncology	270,228	145,196	$8.53	952
Internal Medicine	120,675	82,975	$8.54	1,649
Pathology	113,296	64,466	$8.55	50
Family Practice	66,322	50,359	$8.53	1,297
Medical Oncology	65,158	34,275	$8.53	313
Nurse Practitioner	44,596	32,629	$8.53	912
Nephrology	22,258	13,923	$8.54	240
Physician Assistant	15,405	11,353	$8.53	377
Endocrinology	13,984	8,003	$8.56	77
Rheumatology	9,075	5,644	$8.53	87
Hematology	6,371	3,133	$8.52	16
Gastroenterology	5,265	4,035	$8.48	90
Cardiology	4,799	3,535	$8.55	32
General Practice	2,182	1,608	$8.52	18

83550 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
New Jersey	406,693	$8.56	$8.57	142
Florida	343,882	$8.56	$8.57	549
California	340,287	$8.56	$8.57	295
Texas	247,923	$8.55	$8.57	754
New York	216,002	$8.56	$8.57	607
North Carolina	206,945	$8.56	$8.57	528
Arizona	92,556	$8.55	$8.57	73
Ohio	88,938	$8.55	$8.57	216
Tennessee	83,541	$8.53	$8.57	461
Alabama	81,280	$8.52	$8.57	172
Illinois	76,139	$8.55	$8.57	276
Massachusetts	68,068	$8.57	$8.57	96
Georgia	65,184	$8.56	$8.57	246
Kansas	64,715	$8.57	$8.57	70
Virginia	58,039	$8.54	$8.57	271
Maryland	57,524	$8.56	$8.57	137
Pennsylvania	41,322	$8.56	$8.57	84
Washington	39,457	$8.56	$8.57	65
Nevada	31,121	$8.54	$8.57	53
South Carolina	23,883	$8.53	$8.57	141
Wisconsin	20,714	$8.47	$8.57	43
Arkansas	19,886	$8.52	$8.57	141
Colorado	18,842	$8.55	$8.57	68
Michigan	17,412	$8.55	$8.57	60
Oklahoma	16,377	$8.55	$8.57	40
Indiana	16,235	$8.54	$8.57	48
Minnesota	13,931	$8.53	$8.57	176
Iowa	12,156	$8.54	$8.57	164
Oregon	11,378	$8.54	$8.57	90
Hawaii	11,314	$8.55	$8.57	2
Louisiana	10,303	$8.55	$8.57	73
Mississippi	9,083	$8.47	$8.57	45
Kentucky	8,142	$8.54	$8.57	71
Missouri	7,688	$8.54	$8.57	77
New Mexico	7,671	$8.53	$8.57	14
Utah	7,227	$8.51	$8.57	123
South Dakota	6,360	$8.56	$8.57	34
North Dakota	5,772	$8.57	$8.57	12
Nebraska	5,417	$8.54	$8.57	41
Maine	4,583	$8.53	$8.57	48
Connecticut	4,071	$8.53	$8.57	22
Rhode Island	3,751	$8.55	$8.57	2
New Hampshire	1,289	$8.56	$8.57	34
Delaware	1,242	$8.56	$8.57	3
Idaho	896	$8.57	$8.57	5
Puerto Rico	748	$8.32	$8.57	11
Montana	705	$8.57	$8.57	4
West Virginia	640	$8.54	$8.57	10
Alaska	574	$8.44	$8.57	12
Wyoming	569	$8.54	$8.57	19
U.S. Virgin Islands	503	$8.57	$8.57	3
District of Columbia	237	$8.57	$8.57	5

Related codes

83540Iron level$6.33
83521Measurement of immunoglobulin light chains$16.90
83520Measurement of substance$16.87
83516Analysis of substance$11.28
83525Insulin measurement$11.18
83519Measurement of substance$18.00
83529Measurement of interleukin-6$16.91
83518Analysis of substance$9.43
83527Insulin measurement$12.66

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.