# MRI, mid-back spine, without contrast in Savannah, GA

Billing code `72146`. Prices for this code at 7 hospitals within 35 miles of Savannah, 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/savannah/mri-mid-back-spine-without-contrast

HC MRI, DORSAL SPINE - MRI THORACIC SPINE 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; 3 do not label which half the figure is.

## Typical price

|  | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lowest reported | $123 |
| Typical | $292 |
| Highest reported | $1,436 |

Too few hospitals here for a decile to mean anything, so these are the true extremes and a single unusual figure can set one of them.

## Every hospital publishing this code

| Hospital | Where | CMS rating | Typical | Facility charge | Physician fee | Self-pay | Lowest | Highest | Plans on file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memorial Health University Medical Center | SAVANNAH (5.6 mi) | 1/5 | $123 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $3,950 | $37 | $3,555 | 187 |
| Coastal Carolina Hospital | HARDEEVILLE, SC (15.2 mi) | 4/5 | $230 | $230 | not mentioned | $679 | $222 | $2,281 | 50 |
| Novant Health Hilton Head Medical Center | HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC (27.7 mi) | 2/5 | $230 | $230 | not mentioned | $679 | $222 | $2,572 | 50 |
| St Joseph's Hospital - Savannah | SAVANNAH (5.7 mi) | 2/5 | $292 | $292 | not mentioned | $718 | $209 | $2,644 | 9 |
| Candler Hospital | SAVANNAH (3.0 mi) | 2/5 | $292 | $292 | not mentioned | $718 | $209 | $2,644 | 9 |
| Liberty Regional Medical Center | HINESVILLE (30.4 mi) | not rated | $430 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $1,924 | $415 | $1,924 | 6 |
| Effingham Health System | SPRINGFIELD (30.9 mi) | not rated | $1,436 | not mentioned | not mentioned | $3,334 | $736 | $4,872 | 14 |

## 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 all 7 hospitals here that publish a self-pay price it is HIGHER than what that hospital typically accepts from an insurer. Self-pay is not automatically the cheaper option.

## The doctor's side, roughly

Nationally, Medicare allows about $66 for the clinician who performs or reads this service, across 3,724 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.

2 of these 7 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: Coastal Carolina Hospital, Novant Health Hilton Head Medical Center.

## 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 2026-03-01 to 2026-04-01; per-hospital staleness is flagged above.