CPT 01215
Anesthesia for total hip replacement
The anesthesia code for an open hip arthroplasty. Billed as base units plus 15-minute time units by the anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist, separately from the surgeon and the hospital.
Billed to Medicare
$3,353
What providers submitted, on average, for this code in a hospital setting.
Medicare accepted
$312
What Medicare treated as payable. Not a commercial rate or a cash price.
The gap
10.7x
How many times the accepted amount the billed figure was.
National averages from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2024 data, retrieved 2026-09-14. Medicare fee-for-service, physician and practitioner claims only. The hospital's own charge for the same code is separate and is usually higher. Based on 24,455 services.
Of the 4 anesthesia codes on this site with CMS figures, this one has the widest gap between what is billed and what Medicare accepts. The narrowest is Epidural for labor at 5.8x.
Where this line goes wrong
One anesthesia service, however many providers
An anesthesiologist directing a nurse anesthetist is one service split with modifiers, not two services. Check the modifiers if you have two anesthesia bills.
Time
Anesthesia time should begin when the provider started preparing you and end when they handed you over in recovery, and the record shows both times.
Check it, then ask
- 1
Ask for the anesthesia record. It shows the anesthesia start and stop times, which should match the minutes billed.
- 2
Check the modifier on the anesthesia line: AA means an anesthesiologist did it personally, QK or QY means the anesthesiologist directed a nurse anesthetist, QZ means the nurse anesthetist worked alone. Two full-price bills for the same case (one AA, one QZ) is an error.
- 3
Compare the anesthesia bill with the hospital's 0370 line and the operating room times for the same date.
- 4
If you were out of network for the anesthesiologist at an in-network facility, the No Surprises Act limits what you can be billed to your in-network cost sharing.
The full walkthrough for this kind of bill: You got a surgery bill.
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People also ask
Is the anesthesia bill negotiable?
Yes, particularly if you are self-pay: anesthesia groups routinely accept a discounted amount, and the Medicare rate for the code is a useful reference point when asking.
Sources
This page explains a billing code in general terms. It is not a coding, legal or medical opinion about your bill, and the code descriptions are mediloop's own plain-English summaries, not the official CPT descriptors, which are owned by the American Medical Association. Whether a charge was correct depends on the record of your visit and your payer's rules.