How we estimate all-in prices

· method v0 · Oct 30, 2026

Facility price = hospital-fee rows only (no “professional” billing class, no modifier 26; where a hospital labels every row professional, the technical/global non-26 rate is used). Re-extracted Oct 30, 2026.

A hospital visit usually produces two bills: the facility bill (the hospital) and a professional bill (the radiologist, ER doctor, or gastroenterologist). We show both layers and add them into a range.

How we got these prices

We downloaded each Minnesota hospital’s machine-readable standard-charge file (required by 45 CFR 180), kept facility (hospital-fee) cash rows for the tracked CPT codes, and checked unusual rows by hand (outlier audit, Oct 30, 2026). Each table shows the “last updated” date stated inside that hospital’s file (119 of 119 hospitals state one); “older file” means that date is more than 9 months before our Oct 30, 2026 data compile. Hospitals may have posted newer files since. Addresses come from CMS Hospital General Information; regions from MDH Health Care Coordination regions.

Facility layer

The facility cash price from the hospital’s own machine-readable price file (45 CFR 180).

Professional layer — “from file”

Some systems (Hennepin Healthcare, Mayo Clinic, M Health Fairview) list professional rates in the same file. We take the 10th–90th percentile of the payer-negotiated professional rates for the code (MRI reads use modifier 26 rows). Confidence: high with 40+ rates, medium otherwise. Colonoscopy is medium because setting and doctor vary.

Professional layer — “ESTIMATE”

When the hospital file has no professional rates (the doctors’ group bills separately), we show the official CMS Medicare Physician Fee Schedule payment for Minnesota up to 3×. Floors (CY2026, Minnesota locality 06202-00, conversion factor $33.4009): MRI brain read 70551-26 $66.42 · lumbar MRI read 72148-26 $67.10 · knee MRI read 73721-26 $61.62 · colonoscopy 45378 (facility) $156.32 · ER level 3 99283 $65.04 · ER level 4 99284 $110.45 · CT 70450-26 $38.53 · CT 70486-26 $38.87 · CT 71250-26 $48.38 · CT 71260-26 $52.53 · CT 74176-26 $78.29 · CT 74177-26 $81.86. Source: CMS PFS Relative Value File RVU26D (Oct 2026 release) and GPCI2026. That 1–3× spread matches what we see in Twin Cities files that do post professional rates. These are estimates, not a hospital’s or doctor’s bill.

Colonoscopy anesthesia + pathology (added Oct 30, 2026)

CT radiologist reads

From hospital files (modifier 26, ≥10 rates, p10–p90) for 21 hospitals / 126 hospital×code pairs; ESTIMATE (CMS 2026 MN ×1–3) for the rest.

Files recovered Oct 30, 2026

These price files were not in our first download and were added later. Prices use the same facility-fee rule. None of these four files lists professional (doctor) rates for our codes in usable numbers (fewer than 10), so their all-in ranges use the ESTIMATE professional layer.

Gillette Children’s Specialty Hospital: 3 of 6 codes (confirmed Oct 30, 2026)

Hospital pages normally need hospital-fee cash on at least 4 of our 6 tracked codes. We make one exception: Gillette Children’s Specialty Hospital (Saint Paul, CMS CCN 243300). Of the 6 tracked codes, its posted price file has hospital-fee cash only for the 3 MRI codes: brain MRI (70551), lumbar spine MRI (72148) and knee MRI (73721). We include the page so visitors can compare those posted MRI prices. Colonoscopy (45378) and ER visits (99283, 99284) show “Not in file.” We do not estimate or fill them in. One 99283 cash row in the file is not a hospital-fee row, so our standard rule excludes it and we do not use it.

St Joseph’s Area Health Services, Park Rapids: 2 of 6 codes (confirmed Oct 30, 2026)

A second exception: St Joseph’s Area Health Services (Park Rapids, CMS CCN 241380). Of our 6 tracked codes, its posted price file has hospital-fee cash only for brain MRI (70551) and lumbar spine MRI (72148). We include the page so visitors can compare those posted prices; its CT and ultrasound hospital-fee cash prices from the same file also appear on our statewide CT and ultrasound pages. Knee MRI (73721), colonoscopy (45378) and ER visits (99283, 99284) show “Not in file.” We do not estimate or fill them in.

St Francis Medical Center (Breckenridge): corrected file

An earlier price file filed under this hospital was for a different hospital, Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We never used its prices, and it is now quarantined. We now use St. Francis Medical Center's own file. It is published by CHI St. Francis Health, dated 2026-02-28, and lists 2400 St. Francis Dr, Breckenridge, MN 56520, Minnesota license 700. That file has no billing-class column, so we dropped professional-fee rows, meaning revenue codes 096x–098x or descriptions ending in "PF". Only hospital-fee cash prices are shown, for 4 of the 6 tracked procedures. The colonoscopy code (45378) appears only as professional-fee rows, and the knee MRI code (73721) is not in the file.

Price-file identity audit (2026-10-30)

We checked the hospital name, address and license in the header of each stored price file against the CMS hospital list. Prairie Ridge Hospital and Health Services (Elbow Lake, MN): the file at the old link belonged to Prairie Ridge Health in Columbus, Wisconsin (Wisconsin license). We removed all of those prices and use none of them. The page is now built from the hospital's own Minnesota file. That file is published by Lake Region Healthcare, which now runs the Elbow Lake hospital, is dated 2026-03-17, and lists 1411 Highway 79 East, Elbow Lake, MN 56531, MN license 424045. Only facility-billed outpatient cash prices are used. They cover 5 of 6 tracked procedures; the colonoscopy facility row has no cash price. Lakewood Health Center (Baudette): the file's header names Lakewood Health System in Staples. However, the file comes from a Baudette-specific link and its prices differ from the Staples hospital's, so we kept it and flagged it for review. A follow-up check opened the headers of eight files that first returned web pages: Ridgeview Waconia, Ridgeview Sibley (Arlington), Avera Granite Falls, Avera Tyler, Avera Marshall, Pipestone, and Minnesota Valley Health Center (Le Sueur, operated as Ridgeview Le Sueur). Each one names the correct Minnesota hospital and address. Resolved Oct 30, 2026: North Shore Health (Grand Marais) has moved its file. The current file, dated 2025-04-25, lists 515 5th Ave West, Grand Marais, MN 55604. St Elizabeth's in Wabasha (Gundersen St. Elizabeth's) has a file dated 2026-06-27 that lists 1200 Grant Blvd W, Wabasha, MN 55981. Its Minnesota license column holds the odd value "415010|WI", which we treat as a vendor formatting quirk, because the hospital name and address are both Minnesota. The prices in both current files match the prices already shown. No other file named a hospital or state that didn't match.

Automatic price-file identity check

Every time the site is rebuilt, we read the hospital name, address and license state from the header of each price file and check them against the Minnesota hospital it is filed under. The build stops if a file's license state or address state is outside Minnesota. A built-in test confirms that the check catches a Wisconsin header and a Missouri header, and that it does not flag a Minnesota street address such as "Wisconsin Ave". For files we can't read locally, the check uses a saved copy of the file headers captured on 2026-10-30.

North Shore Health corrections (Oct 30, 2026)

North Shore Health's file posts negotiated rates for ER visit codes 99283 and 99284 only on its "PHYSICIAN FEE" rows, which are the doctor's charge. The hospital ER facility rows for those codes have no negotiated rates. We had been showing those physician rates as hospital negotiated rates (medians of $71.66 and $122.27, from 9 rates each). We have removed them, so North Shore shows no negotiated hospital rate for those two codes. The cash prices are unchanged. For CT code 74176, we show the price the file posts under that code. The file's description text for that row ("ABD/PELVIS WITH AND W/OUT") does not match the standard name for 74176 (CT of the abdomen and pelvis without contrast).

The identity check also compares the hospital name in each price file with the hospital it is filed under. Legal names and health-system names (for example Unity Family Healthcare for St Gabriel's, Carris Health, or Saint Elizabeth's Hospital of Wabasha) pass when they share a distinctive word with the hospital's name or the file's address is in the hospital's city. In Minneapolis and St Paul, city alone is not enough: the file address must also share a street house number with the CMS Hospital General Information address for that hospital. A file naming a different Minnesota hospital in a different city stops the build.

We also scanned every stored Minnesota price file for the same physician-fee pattern North Shore had (rows labeled "PHYSICIAN FEE" carrying negotiated rates for ER codes 99283 and 99284). As of Oct 30, 2026, only North Shore matched that pattern; no other hospital's negotiated ER medians were blanked for this reason.

Hospitals without a usable cash price

These Minnesota hospitals have no usable hospital-fee cash price on any of our 6 tracked codes, so they have no hospital page and no prices on this site. The status is what we found as of Oct 30, 2026.

Not included yet

Always ask for a written Good Faith Estimate. See your billing rights.

Imaging center sources