CPT 70450: CT Head/Brain without Contrast
Medicare pays $74 and commercial payers pay $296 on average nationally for this procedure.
CPT code 70450 describes a computed tomography (CT) scan of the head or brain performed without intravenous contrast, used to evaluate intracranial structures for acute injury, hemorrhage, stroke, mass, or other brain abnormalities; this is an imaging diagnostic service typically provided in an outpatient radiology department, hospital radiology suite, or emergency department imaging unit to obtain axial and reformatted images of the brain without contrast enhancement.
For related coverage guidance, see recent payer policy updates: Lumbar Microdiscectomy, Artificial Cervical Intervertebral Disc, Lumbar Decompression.
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National Reimbursement Benchmarks
National commercial averages sit well above Medicare for CPT 70450: BUCA’s mean commercial rate is $295.80 versus Medicare’s mean of $73.80, indicating a $222.00 gap between average commercial and government pricing. Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Aetna, and UnitedHealth Group all have mean rates between those extremes, but BUCA represents the highest commercial average in this set.
Rate dispersion (P75 minus P25) highlights meaningful variability across payers. Blue Cross Blue Shield shows the widest interquartile spread at $169.70 ($505.20 - $353.50), followed by BUCA at $127.00 ($352.90 - $225.90). Aetna and UnitedHealth Group have tighter spreads of $77.00 ($118.20 - $41.20) and $95.80 ($161.20 - $65.40), respectively, while Cigna’s spread is $104.80 ($170.30 - $60.50). These differences reflect varying concentration of contracted rates by payer.