CPT 20610
Injection into or drainage of a large joint
Putting a needle into a large joint (knee, hip, shoulder) either to draw fluid off or to inject a steroid or other drug. Without imaging guidance it is 20610; with ultrasound guidance it is 20611. The drug injected is billed separately.
Billed to Medicare
$402
What providers submitted, on average, for this code in a hospital setting.
Medicare accepted
$44
What Medicare treated as payable. Not a commercial rate or a cash price.
The gap
9.2x
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 404,171 services.
Among the 10 er procedures and injections codes on this site with CMS figures, this gap ranks 2 of 10 (median 4.7x). The widest is Simple wound repair, up to 2.5 cm at 9.9x.
Where this line goes wrong
Guidance code without guidance
20611 requires ultrasound guidance with a saved image. If the note does not mention ultrasound, 20610 is the correct, cheaper code.
Per joint, not per side of the needle
Draining and injecting the same joint in one session is one procedure, not two.
Check it, then ask
- 1
Ask for the procedure note and check whether ultrasound guidance is documented.
- 2
Check the number of joints treated against the number of lines billed.
- 3
Check the drug injected is billed once, with plausible units.
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People also ask
Is a cortisone shot in the knee expensive?
The procedure code is modest. The steroid is cheap. If the total is large, look at the facility fee if it was done in a hospital clinic rather than a doctor's office.
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.