How much does Medicare pay for HCPCS Q9950?

Medicare allowed an average of $18.49 per service and paid $14.32 of that, the balance being the patient's coinsurance and deductible (2024 data). Providers submitted an average of $68.58, which is what they billed rather than what they received — Medicare pays its fee schedule regardless of the charge.

What is HCPCS code Q9950?

Injection, sulfur hexafluoride lipid microspheres, per ml. It was billed 9,249 times to 2,219 Medicare beneficiaries by 103 providers in 2024.

Which specialty bills Q9950 most?

Cardiology, with 6,520 services from 75 clinicians. Next are Interventional Cardiology, Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine.

HCPCS Q9950

Injection, sulfur hexafluoride lipid microspheres, per ml

$18.49Medicare-allowed amount per service, averaged across 9,249 services

Providers submitted

$68.58

Asking price, not received

Medicare allowed

$18.49

The fee schedule figure

Medicare paid

$14.32

Balance is patient coinsurance

Providers submitted an average of $68.58 for this code and Medicare allowed $18.49 — 3.7× 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 $14.32 (77%); the rest is the patient’s coinsurance and deductible.

Services: 9,249
Beneficiaries: 2,219
Providers billing it: 103
Total allowed: $171,014

What Medicare pays for HCPCS Q9950

Across 9,249 services billed by 103 providers to 2,219 beneficiaries, Medicare allowed an average of $18.49 per service. That is 4.2 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.

This is a drug or supply code rather than a service. The unit is usually a dose or a milligram, so the per-service figure is small by construction and the total is what carries meaning — read it alongside the service count rather than on its own.

Who bills Q9950

Specialty	Services	Beneficiaries	Avg allowed	Providers
Cardiology	6,520	1,676	$18.49	75
Interventional Cardiology	1,158	242	$18.57	11
Anesthesiology	476	63	$18.58	1
Internal Medicine	383	88	$18.25	6
Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology	379	76	$18.56	5
Pediatric Medicine	130	25	$18.54	1
Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology	110	27	$18.64	2
Family Practice	55	11	$17.21	1
Diagnostic Radiology	38	11	$18.47	1

Q9950 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
Texas	2,133	$18.43	$14.34	23
Illinois	1,258	$18.52	$14.65	11
Michigan	703	$18.59	$14.30	3
Wyoming	599	$18.59	$14.62	5
California	589	$18.58	$14.54	3
Missouri	561	$18.62	$14.67	6
Washington	497	$18.13	$14.50	7
North Carolina	493	$18.60	$13.74	9
Georgia	416	$18.59	$14.63	4
Kansas	408	$18.63	$14.59	1
Tennessee	320	$17.86	$14.82	4
New Jersey	271	$18.46	$14.31	7
Montana	265	$18.60	$14.19	4
New York	198	$18.59	$14.81	3
Florida	145	$18.51	$12.90	8
Pennsylvania	114	$18.62	$13.93	2
South Dakota	111	$18.62	$14.24	1
Massachusetts	88	$18.59	$14.33	1
South Carolina	80	$18.57	$14.51	1

Related codes

Q9967Low osmolar contrast material$0.13
Q9966Low osmolar contrast material$0.36
Q9965Low osmolar contrast material$1.37
Q9957Injection, perflutren lipid microspheres, per ml$41.40
Q9958High osmolar contrast material$0.08
Q9968Injection, non-radioactive, non-contrast, visualization adjunct (e.g.,$7.59
Q9956Injection, octafluoropropane microspheres, per ml$41.27
Q9969Tc-99m from non-highly enriched uranium source$14.28
Q9961High osmolar contrast material$0.28
Q9983Florbetaben f18$3080.60
Q9963High osmolar contrast material$0.21
Q9982Flutemetamol f18$3525.03

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.