CPT 70450
CT scan of the head, without contrast
CPT 70450 identifies a CT scan of the head or brain performed without contrast material. On a patient bill, check the service date and scan description against the imaging report and your latest Explanation of Benefits (EOB).
Billed to Medicare
$232
What providers submitted, on average, for this code in a hospital setting.
Medicare accepted
$39
What Medicare treated as payable. Not a commercial rate or a cash price.
The gap
6x
How many times the accepted amount the billed figure was.
National averages from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2024 data, retrieved 2026-09-14. Medicare fee-for-service, physician and practitioner claims only. The hospital's own charge for the same code is separate and is usually higher. Based on 4,712,669 services.
Of the 8 imaging codes on this site with CMS figures, this one has the widest gap between what is billed and what Medicare accepts. The narrowest is Ultrasound of the abdomen, complete at 5.1x.
Where this line goes wrong
Match the scan to the bill
Ask billing to confirm that the imaging report supports a head CT without contrast on the date shown. A billing-code lookup cannot determine whether the scan was medically necessary.
Check separate or repeated charges
A facility charge and a radiologist reading fee may be legitimate separate components. If there are multiple CT lines, ask which scan and component each represents before assuming a duplicate.
Want to know if this line is right on your own bill? Upload it to a free mediloop account. An automatic first look reads the charges and shows what looks worth questioning, usually in about a minute.
Check my bill for freeCheck it, then ask
- 1
Ask for the itemized bill and the imaging report, and check that each billed study has a report.
- 2
Check the two halves match: the facility line and the radiologist's line should carry the same code for the same date.
- 3
If the radiologist was out of network for an emergency visit or at an in-network facility, the No Surprises Act limits what you can be billed.
- 4
If you are self-pay, ask for the hospital's published cash price for the scan; it is usually a fraction of the list price.
The full walkthrough for this kind of bill: You got an ER bill.
Upload the bill to a free mediloop account. An automatic first look reads the charges and shows what looks worth questioning, usually in about a minute. If you want a specialist to dispute it for you, it is a flat $129, refunded in full if the bill isn't lowered by at least $129.
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Codes that travel with this one
People also ask
Why are there two charges for one CT scan?
The hospital bills for performing the scan and the radiologist bills for reading it. That is normal. Check that both describe the same scan.
How much should a head CT cost?
There is no single price. The figures on this page are what providers billed Medicare and what Medicare accepted for the physician component; the hospital's published cash price is the number to ask for if you are paying yourself.
Sources
This page explains a billing code in general terms. It is not a coding, legal or medical opinion about your bill, and the code descriptions are mediloop's own plain-English summaries, not the official CPT descriptors, which are owned by the American Medical Association. Whether a charge was correct depends on the record of your visit and your payer's rules.