How much does Medicare pay for CPT 90834?

Medicare allowed an average of $88.04 per service and paid $67.45 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $177.16, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is CPT code 90834?

Psychotherapy, 45 minutes. It was billed 2,079,420 times to 268,209 Medicare beneficiaries by 10,253 providers in 2024.

Does 90834 pay differently in an office than a hospital?

Yes. The allowed amount averaged $88.49 in an office setting and $84.21 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 90834 most?

Licensed Clinical Social Worker, with 983,095 services from 5,308 clinicians. Next are Psychologist, Clinical, Licensed Professional Counselor, Psychiatry.

CPT 90834

Psychotherapy, 45 minutes

$88.04Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 2,079,420 services

Providers submitted

$177.16

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$88.04

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$67.45

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $177.16 for this code and Medicare allowed $88.04 — 2.0× 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 $67.45 (77%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Office pays differently to hospital

Office / non-facility: $88.49
Hospital / facility: $84.21

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. 1,859,798 services were billed in an office setting and 219,622 in a facility.

Services: 2,079,420
Beneficiaries: 268,209
Providers billing it: 10,253
Total allowed: $183,072,137

What Medicare pays for CPT 90834

Across 2,079,420 services billed by 10,253 providers to 268,209 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $88.04 per service. That is 7.8 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 90834

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Licensed Clinical Social Worker	983,095	119,603	$76.47	5,308
Psychologist, Clinical	851,700	107,026	$102.06	3,469
Licensed Professional Counselor	97,928	14,979	$75.06	705
Psychiatry	78,175	13,313	$100.40	386
Nurse Practitioner	45,486	9,622	$83.48	243
Marriage and Family Therapist	8,156	1,457	$74.35	69
Certified Clinical Nurse Specialist	7,243	797	$85.49	35
Nephrology	1,323	69	$103.30	1
Internal Medicine	1,269	224	$98.79	10
Family Practice	968	195	$97.03	6
Neurology	954	113	$101.25	1
Physician Assistant	593	140	$83.67	6
Geriatric Psychiatry	565	248	$101.88	5
Interventional Pain Management	413	81	$98.05	1
Emergency Medicine	396	77	$96.02	1

90834 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 York	424,385	$93.81	$67.86	1,247
Massachusetts	197,704	$84.21	$63.11	848
California	155,139	$98.45	$72.56	665
Texas	149,781	$85.06	$65.72	457
New Jersey	138,368	$91.17	$66.44	593
Illinois	111,686	$89.97	$68.11	499
Maryland	108,592	$84.10	$62.53	523
Florida	85,203	$88.43	$68.49	461
Pennsylvania	83,764	$89.86	$68.64	509
Michigan	47,654	$84.31	$64.90	343
Virginia	43,771	$83.65	$64.86	242
Minnesota	35,275	$85.01	$64.63	334
Ohio	33,134	$83.34	$65.28	267
Indiana	32,240	$80.21	$62.67	239
Oklahoma	31,048	$75.37	$59.23	100
Connecticut	27,976	$83.41	$61.05	188
New Hampshire	27,115	$84.56	$64.48	161
Wisconsin	26,952	$80.00	$61.99	241
North Carolina	26,894	$81.09	$63.66	212
Missouri	26,664	$81.77	$64.02	170
Georgia	23,218	$81.56	$63.68	139
Iowa	22,856	$76.78	$59.83	181
Tennessee	21,379	$84.94	$67.81	116
Colorado	18,162	$87.88	$66.70	115
Kansas	15,485	$82.57	$64.75	114
Washington	14,058	$92.22	$68.77	110
Arizona	13,384	$91.29	$71.34	79
Vermont	10,948	$80.68	$62.98	55
Oregon	10,591	$87.71	$66.23	112
Nebraska	10,428	$77.56	$61.18	78
Delaware	10,385	$85.71	$67.06	65
South Carolina	9,056	$81.08	$63.52	86
New Mexico	8,738	$85.42	$67.10	45
Louisiana	7,835	$78.69	$61.76	67
Idaho	7,190	$74.83	$58.87	48
Kentucky	7,064	$78.20	$60.34	80
District of Columbia	6,410	$94.36	$67.12	30
Rhode Island	5,862	$84.01	$61.27	48
Arkansas	5,728	$74.37	$58.72	64
Utah	5,711	$85.75	$65.91	35
North Dakota	5,455	$83.51	$64.87	44
Wyoming	3,990	$80.12	$60.23	26
Maine	3,831	$75.99	$56.40	39
West Virginia	3,397	$80.23	$61.00	31
Nevada	3,309	$86.26	$66.96	25
Alabama	2,946	$73.80	$59.29	29
Alaska	2,655	$113.03	$61.28	20
South Dakota	1,911	$84.58	$64.28	14
Montana	1,486	$84.13	$64.00	20
Mississippi	1,058	$80.41	$62.39	19
Puerto Rico	844	$95.93	$72.82	10
Hawaii	670	$99.24	$74.45	9
U.S. Virgin Islands	35	$99.92	$77.79	1

Related codes

90837Psychotherapy$127.42
90832Psychotherapy$65.95
90833Psychotherapy$64.86
90836Psychotherapy$88.70
90868Treatment using magnetic field to stimulate nerve cells in brain, subs$183.83
90853Group psychotherapy$23.01
90870Therapy using electrical currents$103.73
90838Psychotherapy$113.05
90847Family psychotherapy$92.01
90839Psychotherapy for crisis$113.12
90846Family psychotherapy without patient$83.43
90867Treatment using magnetic field to stimulate nerve cells in brain, init$285.49

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.