Guides

A US hospital can charge a different cash price for the same MRI scan. The machine-readable file each hospital must publish holds its prices; here is how to read yours before you book.

The four CPT codes that describe the MRI scans people price most often: brain, lumbar spine, shoulder and knee, all without contrast. Learn what each code means and why the code decides the price.

The questions that turn a vague scan into a number you can plan around: the cash price for your CPT code, what it includes, who reads the images and what the hospital's own price file says.