# Knee arthroscopy with meniscus repair in Atlanta, GA

Billing code `29881`. Prices for this code at 19 hospitals within 35 miles of Atlanta, 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/atlanta/knee-arthroscopy-with-meniscus-repair

Knee arthroscopy/surgery

## 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, 11 publish a facility charge; 1 publish both, mixed together; 7 do not label which half the figure is.

## Typical price

|  | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cheapest tenth | $4,507 |
| Typical | $5,153 |
| Dearest tenth | $5,849 |

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.

## Every hospital publishing this code

| Hospital | Where | CMS rating | Typical | Facility charge | Physician fee | Self-pay | Lowest | Highest | Plans on file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grady Memorial Hospital | ATLANTA (6.1 mi) | 2/5 | see split | $3,923 | $699 | not published | $367 | $6,850 | 99 |
| Southern Regional Medical Center | RIVERDALE (19.7 mi) | 1/5 | $3,266 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $3,265 | $1,091 | $6,810 | 41 |
| Emory Hillandale Hospital | LITHONIA (16.0 mi) | 1/5 | $4,817 | $4,817 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,282 | $7,870 | 17 |
| Northside Hospital Gwinnett | LAWRENCEVILLE (25.8 mi) | 3/5 | $4,895 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $870 | $50,000 | 111 |
| Northside Hospital Forsyth | CUMMING (29.4 mi) | 4/5 | $4,895 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $1,383 | $50,000 | 107 |
| Northside Hospital Cherokee | CANTON (25.4 mi) | 4/5 | $4,895 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $1,383 | $50,000 | 109 |
| Northside Hospital | ATLANTA (3.2 mi) | 3/5 | $4,895 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $1,383 | $50,000 | 108 |
| Northside Hospital Duluth | DULUTH (15.5 mi) | 4/5 | $4,895 | not mentioned | not mentioned | not published | $870 | $50,000 | 111 |
| Emory Decatur Hospital | DECATUR (4.8 mi) | 2/5 | $5,153 | $5,153 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,282 | $7,870 | 19 |
| Emory University Hospital | ATLANTA (3.6 mi) | 4/5 | $5,153 | $5,153 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,282 | $7,870 | 19 |
| Saint Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta | ATLANTA (3.2 mi) | 3/5 | $5,153 | $5,153 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,323 | $7,870 | 19 |
| Emory University Hospital Midtown | ATLANTA (4.7 mi) | 2/5 | $5,153 | $5,153 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,323 | $7,870 | 19 |
| Emory Johns Creek Hospital | JOHNS CREEK (17.9 mi) | 4/5 | $5,153 | $5,153 | not mentioned | $11,309 | $3,323 | $7,870 | 19 |
| WellStar Douglas Medical Center | DOUGLASVILLE (24.5 mi) | 3/5 | $5,797 | $5,797 | not mentioned | not published | $2,323 | $12,508 | 13 |
| WellStar Kennestone Regional Medical Center | MARIETTA (12.1 mi) | 4/5 | $5,849 | $5,849 | not mentioned | not published | $2,323 | $12,476 | 13 |
| WellStar Cobb Medical Center | AUSTELL (15.4 mi) | 3/5 | $5,849 | $5,849 | not mentioned | not published | $2,323 | $12,959 | 13 |
| WellStar North Fulton Medical Center | ROSWELL (13.5 mi) | 2/5 | $5,849 | $5,849 | not mentioned | not published | $2,323 | $12,666 | 13 |
| WellStar Paulding Medical Center | HIRAM (23.5 mi) | 4/5 | $5,849 | $5,849 | not mentioned | not published | $2,323 | $12,476 | 13 |
| Tanner Medical Center Villa Rica | VILLA RICA (33.1 mi) | 3/5 | $7,734 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $7,734 | $2,802 | $11,988 | 17 |

## 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 1 of the 8 hospitals here that publish a self-pay price it is LOWER than what that same hospital typically accepts from an insurer; at the other 7 it is higher.

## The doctor's side, roughly

Nationally, Medicare allows about $1,044 for the clinician who performs or reads this service, across 1,031 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.

1 of these 19 hospitals have not published an updated price file in over a year, or do not say when they last did. Hospitals are required to update at least annually, so those figures may not reflect what they charge now: Tanner Medical Center Villa Rica.

## Others in orthopedics

- [MRI, knee, without contrast](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/mri-knee-without-contrast) -- 108 hospitals, typically $640
- [Large joint injection or fluid drainage](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/large-joint-injection-or-fluid-drainage) -- 108 hospitals, typically $611
- [Shoulder joint dye injection for imaging](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/shoulder-joint-dye-injection-for-imaging) -- 83 hospitals, typically $1,021
- [Shoulder bone shaving (keyhole surgery)](https://clearcharge.org/price/ga/shoulder-bone-shaving-keyhole-surgery) -- 58 hospitals, typically $3,442

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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 2024-07-01 to 2026-04-01; per-hospital staleness is flagged above.