# CT scan, chest, with and without contrast in Athens, GA

Billing code `71270`. Prices for this code at 10 hospitals within 35 miles of Athens, taken from the machine-readable standard charge files each hospital is required to publish under the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule (45 CFR 180.50).

Source page: https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/athens/ct-scan-chest-with-and-without-contrast

HC CAT SCAN OF CHEST COMBO - CT CHEST W WO CONTRAST

## Before quoting any figure below

- **Hospital charges only.** The surgeon, anaesthetist, radiologist and pathologist bill separately and appear in no hospital price file, by construction. Every figure below is part of a total, never the total.
- **A negotiated rate is not a bill.** It is what a hospital and an insurer agreed. What a patient owes depends on their deductible, coinsurance and out-of-pocket maximum.
- **Each hospital's figure is a median across its own plans.** The spread inside one hospital is often wider than the gap between two of them.
- **"not mentioned" is not $0.** It means this hospital's file does not label a row that way. Silence is not a statement that the charge does not exist.
- **A hospital absent from the table says nothing about its prices.** It may publish this code under a revenue or drug code this site cannot map to a procedure.

A procedure code is billed twice -- once by the hospital for its own costs, once by the doctor for their work -- and hospitals publish different sides of that split under the same code. Of the hospitals here, 4 publish a facility charge; 6 do not label which half the figure is.

## Typical price

|  | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cheapest tenth | $183 |
| Typical | $800 |
| Dearest tenth | $1,934 |

The cheapest and dearest tenth are the hospitals a tenth of the way in from each end, not the single cheapest and dearest. Every hospital, including both extremes, is in the table below.

That is a 11-fold difference for the same billing code, between hospitals within 35 miles of each other -- a gap between hospitals, not between treatments.

## Every hospital publishing this code

| Hospital | Where | CMS rating | Typical | Facility charge | Physician fee | Self-pay | Lowest | Highest | Plans on file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northeast Georgia Medical Center | GAINESVILLE (34.5 mi) | 3/5 | $180 | $180 | not mentioned | $1,341 | $173 | $525 | 6 |
| NGMC Barrow | WINDER (16.3 mi) | 4/5 | $183 | $183 | not mentioned | $1,341 | $176 | $525 | 6 |
| St Mary's Hospital | ATHENS (0.0 mi) | 1/5 | $521 | $521 | not mentioned | $417 | $88 | $1,179 | 107 |
| St Marys Good Samaritan Hospital | GREENSBORO (29.6 mi) | 4/5 | $667 | $667 | not mentioned | $1,532 | $321 | $2,121 | 32 |
| Piedmont Walton Hospital | MONROE (18.9 mi) | 4/5 | $742 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $1,519 | $405 | $4,558 | 15 |
| Morgan Medical Center | MADISON (24.6 mi) | not rated | $800 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $566 | $2,201 | 18 |
| Northside Hospital Gwinnett | LAWRENCEVILLE (28.8 mi) | 3/5 | $1,269 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $4,012 | $136 | $5,349 | 140 |
| Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center | ATHENS (0.0 mi) | 4/5 | $1,338 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $1,519 | $405 | $4,153 | 16 |
| Piedmont Newton Hospital | COVINGTON (33.7 mi) | 3/5 | $1,933 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $1,519 | $405 | $4,305 | 15 |
| Piedmont Eastside Medical Center | SNELLVILLE (34.4 mi) | 2/5 | $1,941 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $1,519 | $405 | $4,558 | 15 |

## Self-pay

Self-pay is what the hospital charges someone paying themselves rather than through insurance. Paying self-pay usually does not count toward a deductible, so it can cost less for one service and more across a year. Every other figure here is what an insurer pays, not what a patient would.

At 3 of the 9 hospitals here that publish a self-pay price it is LOWER than what that same hospital typically accepts from an insurer; at the other 6 it is higher.

## The doctor's side, roughly

Nationally, Medicare allows about $56 for the clinician who performs or reads this service, across 482 billing providers in 2024. That is a separate bill from everything above and is NOT added to any figure on this page -- it is here to show the rough size of what a hospital price leaves out.

## Others in imaging & radiology

- [CT scan, head, without contrast](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/ct-scan-head-without-contrast) -- 116 hospitals, typically $392
- [X-ray, chest, 2 views](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-chest-2-views) -- 115 hospitals, typically $93
- [CT scan, head, with and without contrast](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/ct-scan-head-with-and-without-contrast) -- 115 hospitals, typically $521
- [X-ray, chest, 1 view](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-chest-1-view) -- 115 hospitals, typically $87
- [X-ray, neck spine, 2-3 views](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-neck-spine-2-3-views) -- 115 hospitals, typically $106
- [X-ray, lower back spine, 4 or more views](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-lower-back-spine-4-or-more-views) -- 115 hospitals, typically $143
- [X-ray, pelvis](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-pelvis) -- 115 hospitals, typically $107
- [X-ray, tailbone](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/x-ray-tailbone) -- 115 hospitals, typically $98

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Every procedure with a published price in GA: https://clearcharge.org/price/ga
Prices that look wrong: info@clearcharge.org

Compiled by Clearcharge (clearcharge.org) from each hospital's machine-readable standard-charge file. When quoting a figure, cite the source page above. The hospital files behind these figures state data through dates from 2026-02-15 to 2026-07-28; per-hospital staleness is flagged above.